'■<• I ■ • 



* s 7 / a 






CASTILIAN DAYS 






BY 



JOHN HAY. 




E533Ji<sEI 




& 



BOSTON: 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osoood, & Co. 

1871. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, 

BY JOHN HAY, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 

Cambridge. 



- 



The papers composing this volume were written 
in Madrid in the spring of last year. Since then 
a series of important modifications have taken 
place in the politics of Spain, through the accession 
of King Amadeus, and the death of Marshal Prim. 
Nevertheless, I see no reason for changing the 
views I then formed and expressed in regard to the 
general features of Spanish political life, its pros- 
pects and its needs. There are those who think 
the Spaniards are not fit for freedom. I believe 
that no people are fit for anything else. 

J. H. 



CONTENTS 



Page 

Madrid al Fresco 1 

Spanish Living and Dying 27 

Influence of Tradition in Spanish Life ... 49 

Tauromachy 74 

Red-Letter Days . . . . . .98 

An Hour with the Painters 121 

A Castle in the Air 158 

The City of the Yisigoths ..... 182 

The Escorial . 213 

A Miracle Play 233 

An Evening with G-hosts ....... 251 

Proverbial Philosophy 267 

The Cradle and Grave of Cervantes . . . 282 

A Field Night in the Cortes . 313 

The Moral of Spanish Politics .... 347 

The Bourbon Duel 371 

Necessity of the Republic 389 



CASTILIAN DATS. 



MADEID AL FRESCO. 

Madrid is a capital with malice aforethought. 
Usually the seat of government is established in 
some important town from the force of circumstan- 
ces. Some cities have an attraction too powerful 
for the Court to resist. There is no capital of Eng- 
land possible but London. Paris is the heart of 
France. Eome is the predestined capital of Italy 
in spite of the wandering flirtations its varying gov- 
ernments in different centuries have carried on with 
Eavenna, or Naples, or Florence. You can imagine 
no Eesidenz for Austria but the Kaiserdstadt, — the 
gemiithliche Wien. But there are other capitals 
where men have arranged things and consequently 
bungled them. The great Czar Peter slapped his 
Imperial Court down on the marshy shore of the 
Neva, where he could look westward into civiliza- 
tion and watch with the jealous eye of an intelli- 
gent barbarian the doings of his betters. Washing- 
ton is another specimen of the cold-blooded handi- 
work of the capital builders. We will think nothing 

1 A 



2 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

less of the clarum et venerahile nomen of its founder 
if we admit he was human, and his building the 
seat of government nearer to Mount Vernon than 
Mount Washington sufficiently proves this. iBut 
Madrid more plainly than any other capital shows 
the traces of having been set down and properly 
brought up by the strong hand of a paternal gov- 
ernment ; and like children with whom the same 
regimen has been followed, it presents in its matu- 
rity a curious mixture of lawlessness and insipidity. 
Its greatness was thrust upon it by Philip II. 
Some premonitory symptoms of the dangerous 
honor that awaited it had been seen in preceding 
reigns. Ferdinand and Isabella occasionally set up 
their pilgrim tabernacle on the declivity that over- 
hangs the Manzanares. Charles V. found the thin, 
line air comforting to his gouty articulations. But 
Philip II. made it his court. It seems hard to con- 
ceive how a king who had his choice of Lisbon, 
with its glorious harbor and unequalled communi- 
cations ; Seville, with its delicious climate and nat- 
ural beauty ; and Salamanca and Toledo, with their 
wealth of tradition, splendor of architecture, and 
renown of learning, should have chosen this barren 
mountain for his home, and the seat of his Empire. 
But when we know this monkish king we wonder 
no longer. He chose Madrid simply because it was 
cheerless and bare and of ophthalmic ugliness. 
The royal kill-joy delighted in having the dreariest 



MADRID AL FRESCO. 3 

capital on earth. After a while there seemed to 
him too much life and humanity about Madrid, and 
he built the Escurial, the grandest ideal of majesty 
and ennui that the world has ever seen. This vast 
mass of granite has somehow acted as an anchor 
that has held the capital fast moored at Madrid 
through all succeeding years. 

It was a dreary and somewhat shabby court for 
many reigns. The great kings who started the 
Austrian dynasty were too busy in their world-con- 
quest to pay much attention to beautifying Madrid, 
and their weak successors, sunk in ignoble pleas- 
ures, had not energy enough to indulge the royal 
folly of building. When the Bourbons came down 
from France there was a little flurry of construction 
under Philip V., but he never finished his palace in 
the Plaza del Oriente, and was soon absorbed in 
constructing his castle in cloud-land on the heights 
of La Granja. The only real ruler the Bourbons ever 
gave to Spain w T as Charles III., and to him Madrid 
owes all that it has of architecture and civic im- 
provement. Seconded by his able and liberal min- 
ister, Count Aranda, who was educated abroad, and 
so free from the trammels of Spanish ignorance and 
superstition, he rapidly changed the ignoble town 
into something like a city. The greater portion of 
the public buildings date from this active and benefi- 
cent reign. It was he who laid out the walks and 
promenades which give to Madrid almost its only 



CASTILIAN DAYS. 



outward attraction. The Picture Gallery, which is 
the shrine of all pilgrims of taste, was built by him 
for a Museum of Natural Science. In nearly all 
that a stranger cares to see, Madrid is not an older 
city than Boston. 

There is consequently no glory of tradition here. 
There are no cathedrals. There are no ruins. There 
is none of that mysterious and haunting memory 
that peoples the air with spectres in quiet towns 
like Eavenna and Nuremberg. And there is little 
of that vast movement of humanity that possesses 
and bewilders you in San Francisco and New York. 
Madrid is larger than Chicago; but Chicago is a 
great city and Madrid a great village. The pulsa- 
tions of life in the two places resemble each other 
no more than the beating of Dexter's heart on the 
home-stretch is like the rising and falling of an 
oozy tide in a marshy inlet. 

There is nothing indigenous in Madrid. There 
is no marked local color. It is a city of Castile, 
but not a Castilian city, like Toledo, which girds its 
graceful waist with the golden Tagus, or like Sego- 
via, fastened to its rock in hopeless shipwreck. 

But it is not for this reason destitute of an inter- 
est of its own. By reason of its exceptional his- 
tory and character it is the best point in Spain to 
study Spanish life. It has no distinctive traits 
itself, but it is a patchwork of all Spain. Every 
province of the Peninsula sends a contingent to its 






MADRID AL FRESCO. 5 

population. The Gallicians hew its wood and draw 
its water ; the Asturian women nurse its babies at 
their deep bosoms, and fill the promenades with 
their brilliant costumes ; the Yalentians carpet its 
halls and quench its thirst with orgeat of chufas ; 
in every street you shall see the red bonnet and 
sandalled feet of the Catalan; in every cafe, the 
shaven face and rat-tail chignon of the Majo 
of Andalusia. If it have no character of its own, 
it is a mirror where all the faces of the Peninsula 
may sometimes be seen. It is like the mocking- 
bird of the West, that has no song, and yet makes 
the woods ring with every note they have ever 
heard. 

Though Madrid gives a picture in little of all 
Spain, it is not all Spanish. It has a large foreign 
population. Not only its immediate neighbors, the 
French, are here in great numbers, — conquering so 
far their repugnance to emigration, and living as 
gayly as possible in the midst of traditional hatred, 
— but there are also many Germans and English 
in business here, and a few stray Yankees have 
pitched their tents, to reinforce the teeth of the 
Dons, and to sell them ploughs and sewing-ma- 
chines. Its railroads have waked it up to a new 
life, and the Eevolution has set free the thought of 
its people to an extent which would have been 
hardly credible a few years ago. Its streets swarm 
with newsboys and strangers, — the agencies that 



6 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

are to bring its people into the movement of the 
age. 

It has a superb Opera House, which might as 
well be in Naples, for all the national character it 
has ; the Court Theatre, where not a word of Cas- 
tilian is ever heard, nor a strain of Spanish music. 
Even cosmopolite Paris has her Grand Opera sung 
in French, and easy-going Vienna insists that Don 
Juan shall make love in German. The chanipagny 
strains of Offenbach are heard in every town of 
Spain oftener than the ballads of the country. In 
Madrid there are more pilhielos who whistle Bu qui 
s'avance than the Hymn of Eiego. The Cancan 
has taken its place on the boards of every stage in 
the city, apparently to stay ; and the exquisite jota 
and cachuca are giving way to the bestialities of the 
Casino Cadet. It is useless perhaps to tight against 
that hideous orgie of vulgar Menads which in these 
late years has swept over all nations, and stung the 
loose world into a tarantula dance from the Golden 
Horn to the Golden Gate. It must have its day 
and go out ; and when it has passed, perhaps we 
may see that it was not so utterly causeless and 
irrational as it seemed ; but that, as a young Amer- 
ican poet has impressively said, " Paris was pro- 
claiming to the world in it somewhat of the pent- 
up fire and fury of her nature, the bitterness of her 
heart, the fierceness of her protest against spiritual 
and political repression. It is an execration in 



MADRID AL FRESCO. 7 

rhythm, — a dance of fiends, which Paris has in- 
vented to express in license what she lacks in 
liberty." 

This diluted European, rather than Spanish, spirit 
may be seen in most of the amusements of the 
politer world of Madrid. They have classical con- 
certs in the circuses and popular music in the open 
air. The theatres play translations of French plays, 
which are pretty good when they are in prose, and 
pretty dismal when they are turned into verse, as 
is more frequent, for the Spanish mind delights in 
the jingle of rhyme. The fine old Spanish drama 
is vanishing day by day. The masterpieces of 
Lope and Calderon, which inspired all subsequent 
playwriting in Europe, have sunk almost utterly 
into oblivion. The stage is flooded with the wash- 
ings of the Boulevards. Bad as the translations 
are, the imitations are worse. The original plays 
produced by the geniuses of the Spanish Academy, 
for which they are crowned and sonneted and pen- 
sioned, are of the kind upon which we are told that 
gods and men and columns look austerely. 

This infection of foreign manners has completely 
gained and now controls what is called the best 
society of Madrid. A soiree in this circle is like 
an evening in the corresponding grade of position 
in Paris or Petersburg or New York in all external 
characteristics. The toilets are by Worth; the 
beauties are coiffed by the deft fingers of Parisian 



8 CASTILXAN DAYS. 

tiring-women ; the men wear the penitential garb 
of Poole ; the music is by Gounod and Yerdi ; 
Strauss inspires the rushing waltzes, and the mar- 
ried people walk through the quadrilles to the 
measures of Blue Beard and Fair Helen, so sug- 
gestive of conjugal rights and duties. As for the 
suppers, the trail of the Neapolitan serpent is over 
them all. Honest eating is a lost art among the 
effete denizens of the Old World. Tantalizing 
ices, crisped shapes of baked nothing, arid sand- 
wiches, and the feeblest of sugary punch, are the 
only supports exhausted nature receives for the 
shock of the cotillon. I remember the stern reply 
of a friend of mine when I asked him to go with 
me to a brilliant reception, — " ISTo ! Man liveth 
not by biscuit-glace alone ! " His heart was heavy 
for the steamed cherry-stones of Harvey and the 
stewed terrapin of Augustin. 

The speech of the gay world has almost ceased 
to be national. Every one speaks French sufficient- 
ly for all social requirements. It is sometimes to 
be doubted whether this constant use of a foreign 
language in official and diplomatic circles is a cause 
or effect of paucity of ideas. It is impossible for any 
one to use another tongue with the ease and grace 
with which he could use his own. You know how 
tiresome the most charming foreigners are when 
they speak English. A fetter-dance is always more 
curious than graceful Yet one who has nothing to 



MADRID AL FRESCO. 9 

say can say it better in a foreign language. If you 
must speak nothing but phrases, Ollendorff's are as 
good as any one's. Where there are a dozen people 
all speaking French equally badly, each one imag- 
ines there is a certain elegance in the hackneyed 
forms. I know of no other way of accounting for 
the fact that clever people seem stupid and stupid 
people clever when they speak French. This facile 
language thus becomes the missionary of mental 
equality, — the principles of '89 applied to con- 
versation. All men are equal before the phrase- 
book. 

But this is hypercritical and ungrateful. We do 
not go to balls to hear sermons nor discuss the 
origin of matter. If the young grandees of Spain 
are rather weaker in the parapet than is allowed in 
the nineteenth century, if the old boys are more 
frivolous than is becoming to age, and both more 
ignorant of the day's doings than is consistent with 
even their social responsibilities, in compensation 
the women of this circle are as pretty and amia- 
ble as it is possible to be in a fallen world. The 
foreigner never forgets those piquant mutines faces 
of Andalusia and those dreamy eyes of Malaga, — 
the black masses of Moorish hair and the blond 
glory of those graceful heads that trace their de- 
scent from Gothic demigods. They were not very 
learned nor very witty, but they were knowing 
enough to trouble the soundest sleep. Their voices 
l* 



10 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

could interpret the sublimest ideas of Mendelssohn. 
They knew sufficiently of lines and colors to dress 
themselves charmingly at small cost, and their little 
feet were well enough educated to bear them over 
the polished floor of a ball-room as lightly as 
swallows' wings. The flirting of their intelligent 
fans, the flashing of those quick smiles where eyes, 
teeth, and lips all did their dazzling duty, and the 
satin twinkling of those neat boots in the waltz, 
are harder to forget than things better worth re- 
membering. 

Since the beginning of the Eevolutionary regime 
there have been serious schisms and heart-burnings 
in the gay world. The people of the old situation 
assumed that the people of the new were rebels and 
traitors, and stopped breaking bread with them. 
But in spite of this the palace and the ministry of 
war were gay enough, — for Madrid is a city of of- 
fice-holders, and the White House is always easy to 
fill, even if two thirds of the Senate is uncongenial. 
The principal fortress of the post was the palace of 
the sjoirihielle and hospitable lady whose society 
name is Duchess of Penaranda, but who is better 
known as the mother of the Empress of the French. 
Her salon was the weekly rendezvous of the irrec- 
oncilable adherents of the House of Bourbon, and 
the aristocratic beauty that gathered there was too 
powerful a seduction even for the young and hope- 
ful partisans of the powers that be. There was 



MADRID AL FRESCO. 11 

nothing exclusive about this elegant hospitality. 
Beauty and good manners have always been a pass- 
port there. I have seen a proconsul of Prim talk- 
ing with a Carlist leader, and a fiery young democrat 
dancing with a countess of Castile. 

But there is another phase of society in Madrid 
which is altogether pleasing, — far from the domain 
of politics or public affairs, where there is no pre- 
tension or luxury or conspiracy, — the old-fashioned 
Tertulias of Spain. There is nowhere a kindlier 
and more unaffected sociableness. The leading 
families of each little circle have one evening a 
week on which they remain at home. Nearly all 
their friends come in on that evening. There is 
conversation and music and dancing. The young 
girls gather together in little groups, — not con- 
fined under the jealous guard of their mothers or 
chaperons, — and chatter of the momentous events 
of the week, — their dresses, their beaux, and their 
books. Around these compact formations of love- 
liness skirmish light bodies of the male enemy, but 
rarely effect a lodgement. A word or a smile is mo- 
mently thrown out to meet the advance ; but the 
long, desperate battle of flirtation, which so often 
takes place in America in discreet corners and out- 
lying boudoirs, is never seen in this well-organized 
society. The mothers in Israel are ranged for the 
evening around the walls in comfortable chairs, 
which they never leave; and the colonels and 



12 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

generals and chiefs of administration, who form 
the hulk of all Madrid gatherings, are gravely smok- 
ing in the library or playing interminable games of 
tresillon, seasoned with temperate denunciations of 
the follies of the time. 

Nothing can be more engaging than the tone of 
perfect ease and cordial courtesy which pervades 
these family festivals. It is here that the Spanish 
character is seen in its most attractive light. Near- 
ly everybody knows French, but it is never spoken. 
The exquisite Castilian, softened by its graceful 
diminutives into a rival of the Italian in tender 
melody, is the only medium of conversation ; it is 
rare that a stranger is seen, but if he is, he must 
learn Spanish or be a wet blanket forever. 

You will often meet, in persons of wealth and 
distinction, an easy degenerate accent in Spanish, 
strangely at variance with their elegance and cul- 
ture. These are Creoles of the Antilles, and they 
form one of the most valued and popular elements 
of society in the capital. There is a gallantry and 
dash about the men, and an intelligence and inde- 
pendence about the women, that distinguish them 
from their cousins of the Peninsula. The Amer- 
ican element has recently grown very prominent in 
the political and social world. Admiral Topete is 
a Mexican. His wife is one of the distinguished 
Cuban family of Arrieta. General Prim married a 
Mexican heiress. The magnificent Duchess de la 



MADRID AL FRESCO. 13 

Torre, wife of the Regent Serrano, is a Cuban born 
and bred. 

In one particular Madrid is unique among capi- 
tals, — it has no suburbs. It lies in a desolate 
table-land in the windy waste of New Castile ; 
on the north the snowy Guadarrama chills its 
breezes, and on every other side the tawny land- 
scape stretches away in dwarfish hills and shallow 
ravines barren of shrub or tree, until distance fuses 
the vast steppes into one drab plain, which melts 
in the hazy verge of the warm horizon. There are 
no villages sprinkled in the environs to lure the 
Madrilenos out of their walls for a holiday. Those 
delicious picnics that break with such enchanting 
freshness and variety the steady course of life in 
other capitals cannot here exist. No Parisian loves 
la bonne ville so much that he does not call those 
the happiest of days on which he deserts her for a 
row at Asnieres, a donkey-ride at Enghien, or a 
bird-like dinner in the vast chestnuts of Sceaux. 
There is only one Kaiserstadt, sings the loyal Kerl 
of Vienna, but he shakes the dust of the Graben 
from his feet on holiday mornings, and makes his 
merry pilgrimage to the lordly Schoenbrunn or the 
heartsome Dornbach, or the wooded eyry of the 
Kahlenberg. What would white-bait be if not 
eaten at Greenwich ? What would life be in the 
great cities without the knowledge that just out- 
side, an hour away from the toil and dust and 



14 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



struggle of this money-getting world, there are green 
fields, and whispering forests, and verdurous nooks 
of breezy shadow by the side of brooks where the 
white pebbles shine through the mottled stream, — 
where you find great pied pansies under your hands, 
and catch the black beady eyes of orioles watching 
you from the thickets, and through the lush leafage 
over you see patches of sky flecked with thin clouds 
that sail so lazily you cannot be sure if the blue or 
the white is moving? Existence without these 
luxuries would be very much like life in Madrid. 

Yet it is not so dismal as it might seem. The 
Grande Duchesse of Gerolstein, the cheeriest moral- 
ist who ever occupied a throne, announces just be- 
fore the curtain falls, " Quand on n'a pas ce qu'on 
aime, il faut aimer ce qu'on a." But how much 
easier it is to love what you have when you never 
imagined anything better ! The bulk of the good 
people of Madrid have never left their natal city. 
If they have been, for their sins, some day to Val- 
lecas or Carabancheles or any other of the dusty 
villages that bake and shiver on the arid plains 
around them, they give fervid thanks on returning 
alive, and never wish to go again. They shudder 
when they hear of the summer excursions of other 
populations, and commiserate them profoundly for 
living in a place they are so anxious to leave. A 
lovely girl of Madrid once said to me she never 
wished to travel, — some people who had been to 



, 



MADRID AL FRESCO. 15 

Trance preferred Paris to Madrid ; as if that were 
an inexplicable insanity by which their wanderings 
had been punished. The indolent incnriousness of 
the Spaniard accepts the utter isolation of his city 
as rather an advantage. It saves him the trouble 
of making up his mind where to go. Vamonos al 
Prado ! or, as Browning says, — 

" Let 's to the Prado and make the most of time." 

The people of Madrid take more solid comfort in 
their promenade than any I know. This is one of 
the inestimable benefits conferred upon them by 
those wise and liberal free-thinkers Charles III. 
and Aranda. They knew how important to the 
moral and physical health of the people a place of 
recreation was. They reduced the hideous waste 
land on the east side of the city to a breathing 
space for future generations, turning the meadow 
into a promenade and the hill into the Buen Betiro. 
The people growled terribly at the time, as they did 
at nearly everything this prematurely liberal gov- 
ernment did for them. The wise King once wittily 
said : " My people are like bad children that kick 
the shins of their nurse whenever their faces are 
washed." 

But they soon became reconciled to their Prado, 
— a name, by the way, which runs through several 
idioms, — in Paris they had a Pre-aux-clercs, the 
Clerks' Meadow, and the great park of Vienna is 



16 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

called the Prater. It was originally the favorite 
scene of duels, and the cherished trysting-place of 
lovers. But in modern times it is too popular for 
any such selfish use. 

The polite world takes its stately promenade in 
the winter afternoons in the northern prolongation 
of the real Prado, called in the official courtier style 
Las delicias de Isabel Scgunda, but in common speech 
the Castilian Fountain, or Castillana, to save time. 
So perfect is the social discipline in these old coun- 
tries that people who are not in society never walk 
in this long promenade, which is open to all the 
world. You shall see there, any pleasant day be- 
fore the Carnival, the aristocracy of the kingdom, 
the fast young hopes of the nobility, the diplomatic 
body resident, and the flexible figures and graceful 
bearing of the high-born ladies of Castile. Here 
they take the air as free from snobbish competition 
as the good society of Olympus, while a hundred 
paces farther south, just beyond the Mint, the world 
at large takes its plebeian constitutional. How long, 
with a democratic system of government, this pure- 
ly conventional respect will be paid to blueness of 
blood cannot be conjectured. Its existence a year 
after the Revolution was to me one of the most sin- 
gular of phenomena. 

After Easter Monday the Castillana is left to its 
own devices for the summer. With the warm long 
days of May and June, the evening walk in the 






MADRID AL FRESCO. 17 

Salon begins. Europe affords no scene more origi- 
nal and characteristic. The whole city meets in 
this starlit drawing-room. It is a vast evening 
party al fresco, stretching from the Alcala to the 
Course of San Geronimo. In the wide street he- 
side it every one in town who owns a carriage may 
he seen moving lazily up and down, and apparently 
envying the gossiping strollers on foot. On three 
nights in the week there is music in the Eetiro Gar- 
den, — not as in our feverish way beginning so early 
that you must sacrifice your dinner to get there, and 
then turning you out disconsolate in that seductive 
hour which poor Derby used to call the " shank of the 
evening," but opening sensibly at half past nine and 
going leisurely forward until after midnight. The 
music is very good. Sometimes Arban comes down 
from Paris to recover from his winter fatigues and 
bewitch the Spains with his wizard baton. 

In all this vast crowd nobody is in a hurry. They 
have all night before them. They stayed quietly at 
home in the stress of the noontide when the sun- 
beams were falling in the glowing streets like jave- 
lins, — they utilized some of the waste hours of the 
broiling afternoon in sleep, and are fresh as daisies 
now. The women are not haunted by the thought 
of lords and babies growling and wailing at home. 
Their lords are beside them, the babies are sprawl- 
ing in the clean gravel by their chairs. Late in the 
small hours I have seen these family parties in the 



18 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

promenade, the husband tranquilly smoking his hun- 
dredth cigarette, his placens uxor dozing in her chair, 
one baby asleep on the ground, and another slumber- 
ing in her lap. 

This Madrid climate is a gallant one, and kindlier 
to the women than the men. The ladies are built 
on the old-fashioned generous plan. Like a South- 
ern table in the old times, the only fault is too 
abundant plenty. They move along with a superb 
dignity of carriage that Banting would like to banish 
from the world, their round white shoulders shining 
in the starlight, their fine heads elegantly draped in 
the coquettish and always graceful mantilla. But 
you would look in vain among the men of Madrid 
for such fulness and liberality of structure. They 
are thin, eager, sinewy in appearance, — though it 
is the spareness of the Turk, not of the American. 
It comes from tobacco and the Guadarrama winds. 
This still, fine, subtle air that blows from the craggy 
peaks over the treeless plateau seems to take all 
superfluous moisture out of the men of Madrid. 
But it is, like Benedick's wit, " a most manly air, 
it will not hurt a woman." 

This tropic summer-time brings the halcyon days 
of the vagabonds of Madrid. They are a temperate, 
reasonable people, after all, when they are let alone. 
They do not require the savage stimulants of our 
colder-blooded race. The fresh air is a feast. As 
"Walt Whitman says, " They loaf and invite their 



MADRID AL FRESCO. 19 

souls." They provide for the banquet only the most 
spiritual provender. Their dissipation is confined 
principally to starlight and zephyrs; the coarser 
and wealthier spirits indulge in ice, agraz, and 
meringues dissolved in water. The climax of their 
luxury is a cool bed. Walking about the city at 
midnight, I have seen the fountains all surrounded 
by luxurious vagabonds asleep or in revery, dozens 
of them stretched along the rim of the basins, in 
the spray of the splashing water, where the least 
start would plunge them in. But the dreams of 
these Latin beggars are too peaceful to trouble their 
slumber. They lie motionless, amid the roar of 
wheels and the tramp of a thousand feet, their bed 
the sculptured marble, their covering the deep, 
amethystine vault, warm and cherishing with its 
breath of summer winds, bright with its trooping 
stars. The Providence of the worthless watches 
and guards them ! 

The chief commerce of the streets of Madrid 
seems to be fire and water, bane and antidote. It 
would be impossible for so many match- venders to 
live anywhere else, in a city ten times the size of 
Madrid. On every block you will find a wandering 
merchant dolefully announcing paper and phospho- 
rus, — the one to construct cigarettes and the other 
to light them. The matches are little waxen tapers 
very neatly made and enclosed in pasteboard boxes, 
which are sold for a cent and contain about a hun- 



20 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

dred fosforos. These boxes are ornamented with 
portraits of the popular favorites of the day, and 
afford a very fair test of the progress and decline 
of parties. The Queen has disappeared from them 
except in caricature, and the chivalrous face of 
Castelar and the heavy Bourbon mouth of Don 
Carlos are oftener seen than any others. A Madrid 
smoker of average industry will use a box a day. 
They smoke more cigarettes than cigars, and in the 
ardor of conversation allow their tire to go out every 
minute. A young Austrian, who was watching a 
senorito light his wisp of paper for the fifth time, 
and mentally comparing it with the volcano volume 
and Jeern-deutsch integrity of purpose of the meer- 
schaums of his native land, said to me : " What 
can you expect of a people who trifle in that way 
with the only work of their lives ? " 

It is this habit of constant smoking that makes 
the Madrilenos j he thirstiest people in the world ; 
so that, alternating with the cry of " Fire, lordlings ! 
Matches, chevaliers ! " you hear continually the drone 
so tempting to parched throats, " Water ! who wants 
water ? freezing water ! colder than snow ! " This 
is the daily song of the Gallician who marches 
along in his irrigating mission, with his brown 
blouse, his short breeches, and pointed hat, like 
that Aladdin wears in the cheap editions ; a little 
varied by the Valentian in his party-colored mantle 
and his tow trousers, showing the bronzed leg from 



MADRID AL FRESCO. 21 

the knee to the blue-bordered sandals. Numerous 
as they are, they all seem to have enough to do. 
They carry their scriptural-looking water-jars on their 
backs, and a smart tray of tin and burnished brass, 
with meringues and glasses, in front. The glasses 
are of enormous but not extravagant proportions. 
These dropsical Iberians will drink water as if it 
were no stronger than beer. In the winter time, 
while the cheerful invitation rings out to the same 
effect, — that the beverage is cold as the snow, — 
the merchant prudently carries a little pot of hot 
water over a spirit-lamp to take the chill off for 
shivery customers. 

Madrid is one of those cities where strangers fear 
the climate less than residents. Nothing is too bad 
for the Castilian to say of his native air. Before 
you have been a day in the city some kind soul 
will warn you against everything you have been in 
the habit of doing as leading to sudden and severe 
death in this subtle air. You will hear in a dozen 
different tones the favorite proverb which may be 
translated, — 

The air of Madrid is as sharp as a knife, — 
It will spare a candle and blow out your life ; 

and another where the truth, as in many Spanish 
proverbs, is sacrificed to the rhyme, saying that the 
climate is tres meses invierno y nueve iiifierno, — 
three months winter and nine months tophet. At 
the first coming of ^the winter frosts the genuine 



22 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

son of Madrid gets out his capa, the national full 
round cloak, and never leaves it off until late in the 
hot spring days. They have a way of throwing one 
corner over the left shoulder, so that a bright strip 
of gay lining falls outward and pleasantly relieves 
the sombre monotony of the streets. In this way 
the face is completely covered by the heavy woollen 
folds, only the eyes being visible under the som- 
brero. The true Spaniard breathes no out-of-doors 
air all winter except through his cloak, and they 
stare at strangers who go about with uncovered 
faces enjoying the brisk air as if they were lunatics. 
But what makes the custom absurdly incongruous 
is that the women have no such terror of fresh air. 
While the hidalgo goes smothered in his wrappings 
his wife and daughter wear nothing on their necks 
and faces but their pretty complexions, and the gal- 
lant breeze, grateful for this generous confidence, 
repays them in roses. I have sometimes fancied 
that in this land of traditions this difference might 
have arisen in those days of adventure when the 
cavaliers had good reasons for keeping their faces 
concealed, while the senoras, we are bound to be- 
lieve, have never done anything for which their 
own beauty was not the best excuse. 

Nearly all there is of interest in Madrid consists 
in the faces and the life of its people. There is but 
one portion of the city which appeals to the tourist's 
ordinary set of emotions. This is the old Moors' 



MADRID AL FRESCO. 23 

quarter, — the intricate junible of streets and places 
on the western edge of the town, overlooking the 
bankrupt river. Here is St. Andrew's, the parish 
church where Isabella the Catholic and her pious 
husband used to offer their stiff and dutiful prayers. 
Behind it a market-place of the most primitive 
kind runs precipitately down to the Street of 
Segovia, at such an angle that you wonder the tur- 
nips and carrots can ever be brought to keep their 
places on the rocky slope. If you will wander 
through the dark alleys and hilly streets of this 
quarter when twilight is softening the tall tene- 
ment-houses to a softer purpose, and the doorways 
are all full of gossiping groups, and here and there 
in the little courts you can hear the tinkling of a 
guitar and the drone of ballads, and see the idlers 
lounging by the fountains, and everywhere against 
the purple sky the crosses of old convents, while the 
evening air is musical with slow chimes from the 
full-arched belfries, it will not be hard to imagine 
you are in the Spain you have read and dreamed of. 
And, climbing out of this labyrinth of slums, you 
pass under the gloomy gates that lead to the Plaza 
Mayor. This once magnificent square is now as 
squalid and forsaken as the Place Eoyale of Paris, 
though it dates from a period comparatively recent. 
The mind so instinctively revolts at the contempla- 
tion of those orgies of priestly brutality which have 
made the very name of this place redolent with a 



24 CASTILIAN DAYS. 






fragrance of scorched Christians, that we naturally 
assign it an immemorial antiquity. But a glance 
at the booby face of Philip III. on his round-bellied 
charger in the centre of the square will remind us 
that this place was built at the same time the May- 
flower's passengers were laying the massive founda- 
tions of the great Eepublic. The Autos-da-Fe, the 
plays of Lope de Vega, and the bull-fights went on 
for many years with impartial frequency under the 
approving eyes of royalty, which occupied a con- 
venient balcony in the Panaderia, that over-dressed 
building with the two extinguisher towers. Down 
to a period disgracefully near us those balconies 
were occupied by the dull-eyed, pendulous-lipped 
tyrants who have sat on the throne of St. Ferdinand, 
while there in the spacious court below the varied 
sports went on, — to-day a comedy of Master Lope, 
to-morrow the gentle and joyous slaying of bulls, 
and the next day, with greater pomp and ceremony, 
with banners hung from the windows, and my Lord 
the King surrounded by his women and his courtiers 
in their bravest gear, and the august presence of the 
chief priests and their idol in the form of wine and 
wafers, — the judgment and fiery sentence of the 
thinking men of Spain. 

Let us remember as we leave this accursed spot 
that the old palace of the Inquisition is now the 
Ministry of Justice, where a liberal statesman has 
just drawn up the bill of Civil Marriage ; and that 



MADRID AL FRESCO. 25 

in the Convent of the Trinitarians a Spanish Ra- 
tionalist, the Minister of Fomento, is laboring to 
secularize education in the Peninsula, There is 
much coiling and hissing, but the fangs of the ser- 
pent are much less prompt and effective than of 
old. 

The wide Calle Mayor brings you in a moment 
out of these mouldy shadows and into the broad 
light of nowadays which shines in the Puerta del 
Sol. Here, under the walls of the Ministry of the 
Interior, the quick, restless heart of Madrid beats 
with the new life it has lately earned. The flags 
of the pavement have been often stained with blood, 
but of blood shed in combat, in the assertion of 
individual freedom. Although the government holds 
that fortress-palace with a grasp of iron, it can exer- 
cise no control over the free speech that asserts it- 
self on the very sidewalk of the Principal. At 
every step you see news-stands filled with the sharp 
critical journalism of Spain, — often ignorant and 
unjust, but generally courteous in expression and 
independent in thought. Every day at noon the 
northern mails bring hither the word of all Europe 
to the awaking Spanish mind, and within that mas- 
sive building the converging lines of the telegraph 
are whispering every hour their persuasive lessons 
of the world's essential unity. 

The movement of life and growth is bearing the 
population gradually away from that dark mediaeval 



26 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Madrid of the Catholic kings through the Puerta 
del Sol to the airy heights beyond, and the new, 
fresh quarter built by the philosopher Bourbon 
Charles III. is becoming the most important part 
of the city. I think we may be permitted to hope 
that the long reign of savage faith and repression 
is broken at last, and that this abused and suffering 
people is about to enter into its rightful inheritance 
of modern freedom and progress. 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 27 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 

Nowhere is the sentiment of home stronger than 
in Spain. Strangers, whose ideas of the Spanish 
character have been gained from romance and 
comedy, are apt to note with some surprise the 
strength and prevalence of the domestic affections. 
But a moment's reflection shows us that nothing is 
more natural. It is the result of all their history. 
The old Celtic population had scarcely any religion 
but that of the family. The Goths brought in the 
pure Teutonic regard for woman and marriage. The 
Moors were distinguished by the patriarchal struc- 
ture of their society. The Spaniards have thus 
learned the lesson of home in the school of history 
and tradition. The intense feeling of individuality, 
which so strongly marks the Spanish character, and 
which in the political world is so fatal an element 
of strife and obstruction, favors this peculiar do- 
mesticity. The Castilian is submissive to his king 
and his priest, haughty and inflexible with his equals. 
But his own house is a refuge from the contests of 
out of doors. The reflex of absolute authority is 
here observed, it is true. The Spanish father is 
absolute king and lord by his own hearthstone, but 



28 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

his sway is so mild and so readily acquiesced in 
that it is hardly felt. The evils of tyranny are 
rarely seen but by him who resists it, and the 
Spanish family seldom calls for the harsh exercise 
of parental authority. 

This is the rule. I do not mean to say there are 
no exceptions. The pride and jealousy inherent in 
the race make family quarrels, when they do arise, 
the bitterest and the fiercest in the world. In every 
grade of life these vindictive feuds among kindred 
are seen from time to time. Twice at least the steps 
of the throne have been splashed with royal blood 
shed by a princely hand. Duels between noble 
cousins and stabbing affrays between peasant broth- 
ers alike attest the unbending sense of personal 
dignity that still infects this people. 

A light word between husbands and wives some- 
times goes unexplained, and the rift between them 
widens through life. I know some houses where 
the wife enters at one door and the husband at an- 
other ; where if they meet on the stairs, they do not 
salute each other. Under the same roof they have 
lived for years and have not spoken. One word 
would heal all discord, and that word will never be 
spoken by either. They cannot be divorced, — the 
Church is inexorable. They will not incur the scandal 
of a public separation. So they pass lives of lonely 
isolation in adjoining apartments, both thinking 
rather better of each other and of themselves for 
this devilish persistence. 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 29 

An infraction of parental discipline is never for- 
given. I knew a general whose daughter fell in 
love with his adjutant, a clever and amiable young 
officer. He had positively no objection to the 
suitor, but was surprised that there should be any 
love-making in his house without his previous sug- 
gestion. He refused his consent, and the young 
people were married without it. The father and 
son-in-law went off on a campaign, fought, and 
were wounded in the same battle. The general 
was asked to recommend his son-in-law for pro- 
motion. " I have no son-in-law ! " "I mean your 
daughter's husband." " I have no daughter." " I 
refer to Lieutenant Don Fulano de Tal. He is a 
good officer. He distinguished himself greatly in 
the recent affair." "Ah ! otra cosa ! " said the grim 
father-in-law. His hate could not overcome his 
sense of justice. The youth got his promotion, but 
his general will not recognize him at the Club. 

It is in the middle and lower classes that the 
most perfect pictures of the true Spanish family 
are to be found. The aristocracy is more or less in- 
fected with the contagion of Continental manners 
and morals. You will find there the usual propor- 
tion of wives who despise their husbands, and men 
who neglect their wives, and children who do not 
honor their parents. The smartness of American 
" pickles " has even made its appearance among the 
little countesses of Madrid. A lady was eating an 



30 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

ice one day, hungrily watched by the wide eyes of 
the infant heiress of the house. As the latter saw 
the last hope vanishing "before the destroying spoon, 
she cried out, " Thou eatest all and givest me none, 
— maldita sea tu alma!" (accursed be thy soul.) 
This dreadful imprecation was greeted with roars 
of laughter from admiring friends, and the profane 
little innocent was smothered in kisses and cream. 

Passing at noon by any of the squares or shady 
places of Madrid, you will see dozens of laboring 
people at their meals. They sit on the ground, 
around the steaming and savory cocido that forms 
the peasant Spaniard's unvaried dinner. The foun- 
dation is of garbanzos, the large chick pea of the 
country, brought originally to Europe by the Car- 
thaginians, — the Eoman cicer, which gave its name 
to the greatest of the Latin orators. All other 
available vegetables are thrown in ; on days of high 
gala a piece of meat is added, and some forehanded 
housewives attain the climax of luxury by flavoring 
the compound with a link of sausage. The mother 
brings the dinner and her tawny brood of nestlings. 
A shady spot is selected for the feast. The father 
dips his wooden spoon first into the vapory bowl, 
and mother and babes follow with grave decorum. 
Idle loungers passing these patriarchal groups, on 
their way to a vapid French breakfast at a restau- 
rant, catch the fragrance of the olla and the chatter 
of the family, and envy the dinner of herbs with 
love. 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 31 

There is no people so frugal. We often wonder 
how a Washington clerk can live on twelve hun- 
dred dollars, but this would be luxury in expensive 
Madrid. It is one of the dearest capitals in Europe. 
Foreigners are never weary decrying its high prices 
for poor fare; but Castilians live in good houses, 
dress well, receive their intimate friends, and hold 
their own with the best in the promenade, upon in- 
comes that would seem penury to any country par- 
son in America. There are few of the nobility who 
retain the great fortunes of former days. You can 
almost tell on your fingers the tale of the grandees 
in Madrid who can live without counting the cost. 
The army and navy are crowded with general offi- 
cers whose political services have obliged their pro- 
motion. The state is too much impoverished to pay 
liberal salaries, and yet the rank of these officers 
requires the maintenance of a certain social posi- 
tion. Few of them are men of fortune. The re- 
sult is that necessity has taught them to live well 
upon little. I knew widows who went everywhere 
in society, whose daughters were always charmingly 
dressed, who lived in a decent quarter of the town, 
and who had no resources whatever but their hus- 
band's pension. 

The best proof of the capacity of Spaniards to 
spread a little gold over as much space as a gold- 
beater could, is the enormous competition for public 
employment. Half the young men in Spain are 



32 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

candidates for places under government ranging 
from $ 250 to $ 1,000. Places of $ 1,500 to $ 2,000 
are considered objects of legitimate ambition even 
to deputies and leading politicians. Expressed in 
reals these sums have a large and satisfying sound. 
Fifty dollars seems little enough for a month's work, 
but a thousand reals has the look of a most respect- 
able salary. In Portugal, however, you can have 
all the delightful sensations of prodigality at a con- 
temptible cost. You can pay, without serious 
damage to your purse, five thousand reis for your 
breakfast. 

It is the smallness of incomes and the necessity 
of looking sharply to the means of life that makes 
the young people of Madrid so prudent in their 
love affairs. I know of no place where ugly heir- 
esses are such belles, and where young men with 
handsome incomes are so universally esteemed by 
all who know them. The stars on the sleeves of 
young officers are more regarded than their dancing, 
and the red belt of a field officer is as winning in 
the eyes of beauty as a cestus of Venus. A subal- 
tern offered his hand and heart to a black-eyed girl 
of Castile. She said kindly but firmly that the 
night was too cloudy. " What," said the stupefied 
lover, " the sky is full of stars." " I see but one," 
said the prudent beauty, her fine eyes resting pen- 
sively upon his cuff, where one lone luminary indi- 
cated his rank. 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 33 

This spirit is really one of forethought, and not 
avarice. People who have enough for two almost 
always marry from inclination, and frequently take 
partners for life without a penny. 

If men were never henpecked except by learned 
wives, Spain would be the place of all others for 
timid men to marry in. The girls are bright, vi- 
vacious, and naturally very clever, but they have 
scarcely any education whatever. They never know 
the difference between b and v. They throw them- 
selves in orthography entirely upon your benevo- 
lence. They know a little music and a little French, 
but they have never crossed, even in a school-clay 
excursion, the border line of the ologies. They do 
not even read novels. They are regarded as in- 
jurious, and cannot be trusted to the daughters until 
mamma has read them. Mamma never has time to 
read them, and so they are condemned by default. 
Fernan Caballero, in one of her sleepy little romances, 
refers to this illiterate character of the Spanish ladies, 
and says it is their chief charm, — that a Christian 
woman, in good society, ought not to know anything 
beyond her cookery-book and her missal. There is 
an old proverb which coarsely conveys this idea: 
A mule that whinnies and a woman that talks 
Latin never come to any good. There is a con- 
tented acquiescence in this moral servitude among 
the fair Spaniards which would madden our agita- 
tresses. (See what will become of the language 



34 CASTILIAN DAYS. 






when male words are crowded out of the diction- 
ary!) 

It must be the innocence which springs from 
ignorance that induces an occasional coarseness of 
expression which surprises you in the conversation 
of those lovely young girls. They will speak with 
perfect freedom of the etat-civil of a young unmar- 
ried mother. A maiden of fifteen said to me : "I 
must go to a party this evening clecolletee, and I hate 
it. Benigno is getting old enough to marry, and he 
wants to see all the girls in low neck before he 
makes up his mind." They all swear like troopers, 
without a thought of profanity. Their mildest ex- 
pression of surprise is Jesus Maria ! They change 
their oaths with the season. At the feast of the 
Immaculate Conception, the favorite oath is Maria 
Purissima. This is a time of especial interest to 
young girls. It is a period of compulsory confes- 
sion, — conscience-cleaning, as they call it. They 
are all very pious in their way. They attend to 
their religious duties with the same interest which 
they displayed a few years before in dressing and 
undressing their dolls, and will display a few years 
later in putting the lessons they learned with their 
dolls to a more practical use. 

The visible concrete symbols and observances of 
religion have great influence with them. They are 
fond of making vows in tight places and faithfully 
observing them afterwards. In an hour's walk in 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 35 

the streets of Madrid you will see a dozen ladies 
with a leather strap buckled about their slender 
waists and hanging nearly to the ground. Others 
wear a knotted cord and tassels. These are worn 
as the fulfilment of vows, or penances. I am afraid 
they give rise to much worldly conjecture on the 
part of idle youth as to what amiable sins these 
pretty penitents can have been guilty of, It is not 
prudent to ask an explanation of the peculiar mercy, 
or remorse, which this purgatorial strap commemo- 
rates. You will probably not enlarge your stock of 
knowledge further than to learn that the lady in 
question considers you a great nuisance. 

The graceful lady who, in ascending the throne 
of France, has not ceased to be a thorough Spaniard, 
still preserves these pretty weaknesses of her youth. 
She vowed a chapel to her patron saint if her first- 
born was a man-child, and paid it. She has hung 
a vestal lamp in the Church of Notre Dame des 
Victoires, in pursuance of a vow she keeps rigidly 
secret. She is a firm believer in relics also, and 
keeps a choice assortment on hand in the Tuileries 
for sudden emergencies. When old Baciocchi lay 
near his death, worn out by a horrible nervous dis- 
order which would not let him sleep, the Empress 
told the doctors, with great mystery, that she would 
cure him. After a few preliminary masses, she 
came into his room and hung on his bedpost a little 
gold-embroidered sachet containing (if the evidence 



36 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

of holy men is to "be believed) a few threads of the 
swaddling-clothes of John the Baptist. Her simple 
childlike faith wrung the last grim smile from the 
tortured lips of the dying courtier. 

The very names of the Spanish women are a 
constant reminder of their worship. They are all 
named out of the calendar of saints and virgin 
martyrs. A large majority are christened Mary ; 
but as this sacred name by much use has lost all 
distinctive meaning, some attribute, some especial 
invocation of the Virgin, is always coupled with it. 
The names of Dolores, Mercedes, Milagros, recall 
Our Lady of the Sorrows, of the Gifts, of the 
Miracles. I knew a hoydenish little gypsy who 
bore the tearful name of Lagrimas. The most ap- 
propriate name I heard for these large-eyed, soft- 
voiced beauties was Peligros, Our Lady of Dangers. 
"Who could resist the comforting assurance of " Con- 
suelo " ? " Blessed," says my Lord Lytton, " is wo- 
man who consoles." What an image of maiden 
purity goes with the name of Meves, the Virgin of 
the Snows ! From a single cotillon of Castilian 
girls you can construct the whole history of Our 
Lady. Conception, Annunciation, Sorrows, Soli- 
tude, Assumption. As young ladies are never 
called by their family names, but always by their 
baptismal appellations, you cannot pass an evening 
in a Spanish tcrtulia without being reminded of 
every stage in the life of the Immaculate Mother, 
from Bethlehem to Calvary and beyond. 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 37 

The common use of sacred words is universal in 
Catholic countries, but nowhere so striking as in 
Spain. There is a little solemnity in the French 
adieu. But the Spaniard says actios instead of 
"good morning." No letter closes without the 
prayer, " God guard your Grace many years ! " They 
say a judge announces to a murderer his sentence 
of death with the sacramental wish of lenc^th of 
days. There is something a little shocking to a 
Yankee mind in the label of Lachryma Christi ; 
but in La Mancha they call fritters the Grace of 
God. 

The piety of the Spanish women does not pre- 
vent them from seeing some things clearly enough 
with their bright eyes. One of the most bigoted 
women in Spain recently said : " I hesitate to let 
my child go to confession. The priests ask young 
girls such infamous questions, that my cheeks burn 
when I think of them, after all these years." I 
stood one Christmas eve in the cold midnight wind, 
waiting for the church doors to open for the night 
mass, the famous misa del gallo. On the steps be- 
side me sat a decent old woman with her two daugh- 
ters. At last she rose and said, " Girls, it is no use 
■waiting any longer. The priests won't leave their 
housekeepers this cold night to save anybody's 
soul." In these two cases, taken from the two ex- 
tremes of the Catholic society, there was no disre- 
spect for the Church or for religion. Both these 



38 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

women believed with a blind faith. But they could 
not help seeing how unclean were the hands that 
dispensed the bread of life. 

The respect shown to the priesthood as a body is 
marvellous, in view of the profligate lives of many. 
The general progress of the age has forced most of 
the dissolute priests into hypocrisy. But their 
cynical immorality is still the bane of many fami- 
lies. And it needs but a glance at the vile manual 
of confession, called the Golden Key, the author of 
which is the too well known Padre Claret, Confes- 
sor to the Queen, to see the systematic moral poison- 
ing the minds of Spanish women must undergo, 
who pay due attention to what is called their re- 
ligious duties. If a confessor obeys the injunctions 
of this high ecclesiastical authority, his fair peni- 
tents will have nothing to learn from a diligent 
perusal of Faublas or Casanova. It would, how- 
ever, be unjust to the priesthood to consider them 
all as corrupt as royal chaplains. It requires a 
combination of convent and palace life to produce 
these finished specimens of mitred infamy. 

It is to be regretted that the Spanish women are 
kept in such systematic ignorance. They have a 
quicker and more active intelligence than the men. 
With a fair degree of education, much might be 
hoped from them in the intellectual development 
of the country. In society, you will at once be 
struck with the superiority of the women to their 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 39 

husbands and brothers in cleverness and apprecia- 
tion. Among small tradesmen, the wife always 
comes to the rescue of her slow spouse when she 
sees him befogged in a bargain. In the fields, you 
ask a peasant some question about your journey. 
He will hesitate, and stammer, and end with, " Qiiien 
scibe ? " but his wife will answer with glib complete- 
ness all you want to know. I can imagine no cause 
for this, unless it be that the men cloud their brains 
all day with the fumes of tobacco, and the women 
do not. 

The personality of the woman is not so entirely 
merged in that of the husband as among us. She 
retains her own baptismal and family name through 
life. If Miss Matilda Smith marries Mr. Jonathan 
Jones, all vestige of the former gentle being vanishes 
at once from the earth, and Mrs. Jonathan Jones 
alone remains. But in Spain she would become 
Mrs. Matilda Smith de Jones, and her eldest-born 
would be called Don Juan Jones y Smith. You 
ask the name of a married lady in society, and you 
hear as often her own name as that of her husband. 

Even among titled people, the family name 
seems more highly valued than the titular designa- 
tion. Everybody knows Narvaez, but how few have 
heard of the Duke of Valencia ! The Eegent Ser- 
rano has a name known and honored over the world, 
but most people must think twice before they re- 
member the Duke de la Torre. Juan Prim is better 



40 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

known than the Marquis de los Castillejos ever will 
be. It is perhaps due to the prodigality with which 
titles have been scattered in late years, that the 
older titles are more regarded than the new, al- 
though of inferior grade. Thus Prim calls himself 
almost invariably the Conde de Eeus, though his 
grandeeship came with his investiture as Marquis. 

There is something quite noticeable about this 
easy way of treating one's name. We are accus- 
tomed to think a man can have but one name, and 
can sign it but in one way. Lord Derby can no 
more call himself Mr. Stanley than President Grant 
can sign a bill as U. Simpson. Yet both these sig- 
natures would be perfectly valid according to Span- 
ish analogy. The Marquis of Santa Marta signs 
himself Guzman ; the Marquis of Albaida uses no 
signature but Orense ; both of these gentlemen 
being Eepublican deputies. I have seen General 
Prim's name signed officially, Conde de Eeus, Mar- 
ques de los Castillejos, Prim, J. Prim, Juan Prim, 
and Jean Prim, changing the style as often as the 
humor strikes him. 

Their forms of courtesy are, however, invariable. 
You can never visit a Spaniard without his inform- 
ing you that you are in your own house. If, walk- 
ing with him, you pass his residence, he asks you 
to enter your house and uufatigue yourself a mo- 
ment. If you happen upon any Spaniard, of what- 
ever class, at the hour of repast, he always offers 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 41 

you his dinner; if you decline, it must be with 
polite wishes for his digestion. With the Spaniards, 
no news is good news ; it is therefore civil to ask a 
Spaniard if his lady- wife goes on without novelty, 
and to express your profound gratification on being 
assured that she does. Their forms of hospitality 
are evidently Moorish, derived from the genuine 
open hand and open tent of the children of the 
desert ; now nothing is left of them but grave and 
decorous words. In the old times, one who would 
have refused such offers would have been held a 
churl ; now one who would accept them would be 
regarded as a boor. 

There is still something primitive about the Span- 
ish servants. A flavor of the old romances and the 
old comedy still hangs about them. They are chatty 
and confidential to a degree that appalls a stiff and 
formal Englishman of the upper middle class. The 
British servant is a chilly and statuesque image of 
propriety. The French is an intelligent and sympa- 
thizing friend. You can make of him what you 
like. But the Italian, and still more the Spaniard, 
is as gay as a child, and as incapable of intentional 
disrespect. The Castilian grandee does not regard 
his dignity as in danger from a moment's chat with 
a waiter. He has no conception of that ferocious 
decorum we Anglo-Saxons require from our man- 
servants and our maid-servants. The Spanish ser- 
vant seems to regard it as part of his duty to keep 



42 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

your spirits gently excited while you dine by the 
gossip of the day. He joins also in your discus- 
sions, whether they touch lightly on the politics of 
the hour or plunge profoundly into the depths of 
philosophic research. He laughs at your wit, and 
swings his napkin with convulsions of mirth at 
your good stories. He tells you the history of his 
life while you are breaking your egg, and lays the 
story of his loves before you with your coffee. Yet 
he is not intrusive. He will chatter on without 
waiting for a reply, and when you are tired of him 
you can shut him off with a word. There are few 
Spanish servants so uninteresting but that you can 
find in them from time to time some sparks of that 
ineffable light which shines forever in Sancho and 
Figaro. 

The traditions of subordination, which are the 
result of long centuries of tyranny, have prevented 
the development of that feeling of independence 
among the lower orders, which in a freer race finds 
its expression in ill manners and discourtesy to 
superiors. I know a gentleman in the West whose 
circumstances had forced him to become a waiter in 
a backwoods restaurant. He bore a deadly grudge 
at the profession that kept him from starving, and 
asserted his unconquered nobility of soul by scowl- 
ing at his customers and swearing at the viands he 
dispensed. I remember the deep sense of wrong 
with which he would growl, " Two buckwheats, be- 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 43 

gawd ! " You see nothing of this defiant spirit in 
Spanish servants. They are heartily glad to find 
employment, and ask no higher good-fortune than 
to serve acceptably. As to drawing comparisons 
between themselves and their masters, they never 
seem to think they belong to the same race. I saw 
a pretty grisette once stop to look at a show-window 
where there was a lay-figure completely covered 
with all manner of trusses. She gazed at it long 
and earnestly, evidently thinking it was some new 
fashion just introduced into the gay world. At last 
she tripped away with all the grace of her unfet- 
tered limbs, saying, " If the fine ladies have to wear 
all those machines, I am glad I am not made like 
them." 

Whether it be from their more regular and active 
lives, or from their being unable' to pay for medical 
attendance, the poorer classes suffer less from sick- 
ness than their betters. An ordinary Spaniard is 
sick but once in his life, and that once is enough, — 
't will serve. The traditions of the old satires which 
represented the doctor and death as always hunting 
in couples still survive in Spain. It is taken as so 
entirely a matter of course that a patient must die, 
that the law of the land imposed a heavy fine upon 
physicians who did not bring a priest on their sec- 
ond visit. His labor of exhortation and confession 
was rarely wasted. There were few sufferers who 
recovered from the shock of that ghastly mummery 



44 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

in their chambers. Medical science still labors in 
Spain under the ban of ostracism, imposed in the 
days when all research was impiety. The Inquisi- 
tion clamored for the blood of Vesalius, who had 
committed the crime of a demonstration in anatomy. 
He was forced into a pilgrimage of expiation, and 
died on the way to Palestine. The Church has al- 
ways looked with a jealous eye upon the inquirers, 
the innovators. Why these probes, these lancets, 
these multifarious drugs, when the object in view 
could be so much more easily obtained by the judi- 
cious application of masses and prayers ? 

So it has come about that the doctor is a Pariah, 
and miracles nourish in the Peninsula. At every 
considerable shrine you will see the walls covered 
with waxen models of feet, legs, hands, and arms 
cured by the miraculous interposition of the genius 
loci, and scores of little crutches attesting the mar- 
vellous hour when they became useless. Each 
shrine, like a mineral spring, has its own especial 
virtue. A Santiago medal was better than quinine 
for ague. St. Veronica's handkerchief is sovereign 
for sore eyes. A bone of St. Magin supersedes the 
use of mercury. A finger-nail of San Frutos cured 
at Segovia a case of congenital idiocy. The Virgin 
of Ona acted as a vermifuge on royal infantas, and 
her girdle at Tortosa smooths their passage into this 
world. In this age of unfaith relics have lost much 
of their power. They turn out their score or so of 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 45 

miracles every feast day, it is true, but are no longer 
capable of the tours de force of earlier days. Car- 
dinal de Eetz saw with his eyes a man whose wooden 
legs were turned to capering flesh and blood by the 
image of the Pillar of Saragossa. But this was in 
the good old times before newspapers and telegraphs 
had come to dispel the twilight of belief. 

Now, it is excessively probable that neither doc- 
tor nor priest can do much if the patient is hit in 
earnest. He soon succumbs, and is laid out in his 
best clothes in an improvised chapel and duly 
sped on his way. The custom of burying the dead 
in the gown and cowl of monks has greatly passed 
into disuse. The mortal relics are treated with 
growing contempt, as the superstitions of the peo- 
ple gradually lose their concrete character. The 
soul is the important matter which the Church now 
looks to. So the cold clay is carted off to the 
cemetery with small ceremony. Even the coffins 
of the rich are jammed away into receptacles too 
small for them, and hastily plastered out of sight. 
The poor are carried off on trestles and huddled into 
their nameless graves, without following or blessing. 
Children are buried with some regard to the old 
Oriental customs. The coffin is of some gay and 
cheerful color, pink or blue, and is carried open to 
the grave by four of the dead child's young com- 
panions, a fifth walking behind with the ribboned 
coffin-lid. I have often seen these touching little 



46 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

parties moving through the bustling streets, the 
peaceful small face asleep under the open sky, decked 
with the fading roses and withering lilies. 

In all well-to-do families the house of death is 
deserted immediately after the funeral. The stricken 
ones retire to some other habitation, and there pass 
eight days in strict and inviolable seclusion. On 
the ninth day the great masses for the repose of the 
soul of the departed are said in the parish church, 
and all the friends of the family are expected to be 
present. These masses are the most important and 
expensive incident of the funeral. They cost from 
two hundred to one thousand dollars, according to 
the strength and fervor of the orisons employed. 
They are repeated several years on the anniversary 
of the decease, and afford a most sure and flourish- 
ing revenue to the Church. They are founded upon 
those feelings inseparable from every human heart, 
vanity and affection. Our dead friends must be as 
well prayed for as those of others, and who knows 
but that they may be in deadly need of prayers ! To 
shorten their fiery penance by one hour, who would 
not fast for a week ? On these anniversaries a 
black-bordered advertisement appears in the news- 
papers, headed by the sign of the cross and the 
Requiescat in Pace, announcing that on this day 
twelve months Don Fulano de Tal passed from 
earth garnished with the holy sacraments, that all 
the masses this day celebrated in such and such 



SPANISH LIVING AND DYING. 47 

churches will be applied to the benefit of his spirit's 
repose, and that all Christian friends are hereby re- 
quested to commend his soul this day unto God. 
These united efforts at stated times are regarded as 
very efficacious. 

A luxury of grief, in those who can afford it, con- 
sists in shutting up the house where a death has 
taken place and never suffering it to be opened 
again. I once saw a beautiful house and wide gar- 
den thus abandoned in one of the most fashionable 
streets of Madrid. I inquired about it, and found 

it was formerly the residence of the Duke of . 

His wife had died there many years before, and 
since that day not a door nor a window had been 
opened. The garden gates were red and rough with 
rust. Grass grew tall and rank in the gravelled 
walks. A thick lush undergrowth had overrun the 
flower-beds and the lawns. The blinds were rotting 
over the darkened windows. Luxuriant vines clam- 
bered over all the mossy doors. The stucco was 
peeling from the walls in great unwholesome blotches. 
Wild birds sang all day in the safe solitude. There 
was something impressive in this spot of mould and 
silence, lying there so green and implacable in the 
very heart of a great and noisy city. The Duke 
lived in Paris, leading the rattling life of a man of 
the world. He never would sell or let that Madrid 
house. Perhaps in his heart also, that battered 
thoroughfare worn by the pattering boots of Ma- 



48- CASTILIAN DAYS. 

bille and the Bois, and the Quartier Breda, there 
was a green spot sacred to memory and silence, 
where no footfall shonld ever light, where no living 
voice should ever be heard, shut out from the world 
and its cares and its pleasures, where through the 
gloom of dead days he could catch a glimpse of a 
white hand, a flash of a dark eye, the rustle of a 
trailing robe, and feel sweeping over him the old 
magic of love's young dream, softening his fancy to 
tender regret and his eyes to a happy mist, 

" Like that which kept the heart of Eden green 
Before the useful trouble of the rain." 



INFLUENCE OF TEADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 49 



INFLUENCE OE TEADITION IN SPANISH 
LIFE. 

Intelligent Spaniards with whom I have con- 
versed on political matters have often exclaimed, 
" Ah, you Americans are happy ! you have no tra- 
ditions." The phrase was at first a puzzling one. 
We Americans are apt to think we have traditions, 
— a rather clearly marked line of precedents. 
And it is hard to see how a people should be 
happier without them. It is not anywhere con- 
sidered a misfortune to have had a grandfather, I 
believe, and some very good folks whom we know 
take an innocent pride in that very natural fact. 
It was not easy to conceive why the possession of 
a glorious history of many centuries should be 
regarded as a drawback. But a closer observation 
of Spanish life and thought reveals the curious 
and hurtful effect of tradition upon every phase of 
existence. 

In the commonest events of every day you will 
find the flavor of past ages lingering in petty an- 
noyances. The insecurity of the middle ages has 
left as a legacy to our times a complicated system 
of obstacles to a man getting into his own house at 



t 

50 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

night. I lived in a pleasant house on the Prado, 
with a minute garden in front, and an iron gate and 
railing. This gate was shut and locked by the 
night watchman of the quarter at midnight, — so 
conscientiously that he usually had everything snug 
by half past eleven. As the same man had charge 
of a dozen or more houses, it was scarcely reason- 
able to expect him to be always at your own gate 
when you arrived. But by a singular fatality I 
think no man ever found him in sight at any hour. 
He is always opening some other gate or shutting 
some other door, or settling the affairs of the nation 
with a friend in the next block, or carrying on a 
chronic courtship at the lattice of some olive- 
cheeked soubrette around the corner. Be that as 
it may, no one ever found him on hand ; and there 
is nothing to do but to sit down on the curbstone 
and lift up your voice and shriek for him until he 
comes. At two o'clock of a morning in January 
the exercise is not improving to the larynx or the 
temper. There is a tradition in the very name of 
this worthy. He is called the Sereno, because a 
century or so ago he used to call the hour and the 
state of the weather, and as the sky is almost al- 
ways cloudless here, he got the name of the Sereno, 
as the quail is called Bob White, from much itera- 
tion. The Sereno opens your gate and the door of 
your house. When you come to your own floor you 
must ring, and your servant takes a careful survey 



INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 51 

of you through a latticed peep-hole before he will 
let you in. You may positively forbid this every 
day in the year, but the force of habit is too strong 
in the Spanish mind to suffer amendment. 

This absurd custom comes evidently down from 
a time of great lawlessness and license, when no 
houses were secure without these precautions, when 
people rarely stirred from their doors after night- 
fall, and when a door was never opened to a 
stranger. Now, when no such dangers exist, the 
annoying and senseless habit still remains, because 
no one dreams of changing anything which their 
fathers thought proper. Three hundred thousand 
people in Madrid submit year after year to this 
nightly cross, and I have never heard a voice raised 
in protest, nor even in defence of the custom. 

There is often a bitterness of opposition to evi- 
dent improvement which is hard to explain. In 
the last century, when the eminent naturalist 
Bowles went down to the Almaden silver-mines, 
by appointment of the government, to see what 
was the cause of their exhaustion, he found that 
they had been worked entirely in perpendicular 
shafts instead of following the direction of the 
veins. He perfected a plan for working them in 
this simple and reasonable way, and no earthly 
power could make the Spanish miners obey his or- 
ders. There was no precedent for this new process, 
and they would not touch it. They preferred star- 



52 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

vation rather than offend the memory of their 
fathers by a change. At last they had to be dis- 
missed and a full force imported from Germany, 
under whose hands the mines became instantly 
enormously productive. 

I once asked a very intelligent English contractor 
why he used no wheelbarrows in his work. He had 
some hundreds of stalwart navvies employed car- 
rying dirt in small wicker baskets to an embank- 
ment. He said the men would not use them. 
Some said it broke their backs. Others discovered 
a capital way of amusing themselves by putting 
the barrow on their heads and whirling the wheel as 
rapidly as possibly with their hands. This was a 
game which never grew stale. The contractor gave 
up in despair and went back to the baskets. 

But it is in the official regions that tradition is 
most powerful. In the Budget of 1870 there was a 
curious chapter called " Charges of Justice." This 
consisted of a collection of articles appropriating 
large sums of money for the payment of feudal 
taxes to the great aristocracy of the kingdom as a 
compensation for long extinct seignories. The Duke 
of Bivas got thirteen hundred dollars for carrying 
the mail to Victoria. The Duke of San Carlos draws 
ten thousand dollars for carrying the royal corre- 
spondence to the Indies. Of course this service 
ceased to belong to these families some centuries 
ago, but the salary is still paid. The Duke of Al- 



INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 53 

modovar is well paid for supplying the baton of 
office to the Alguazil of Cordova. The Duke of 
Gsuna — one of the greatest grandees of the king- 
dom, a gentleman who has the right to wear seven- 
teen hats in the presence of the Queen — receives 
fifty thousand dollars a year for imaginary feudal 
services. The Count of Altamira, who, as his name 
indicates, is a gentleman of high views, receives as 
a salve for the suppression of his fief thirty thou- 
sand dollars a year. In consideration of this sum 
he surrenders, while it is punctually paid, the privi- 
lege of hanging his neighbors. 

When the Budget was discussed, a Republican 
member gently criticised this chapter ; but his 
amendment for an investigation of these Charges 
was indignantly rejected. He was accused of a 
shocking want of Espanolismo. He was thought to 
have no feeling in his heart for the glories of Spain. 
The respectability of the Chamber could find but one 
word injurious enough to express their contempt for 
go shameless a proposition j they said it was little 
better than socialism. The "Charges" were all 
voted. Spain, tottering on the perilous verge of 
bankruptcy, her schoolmasters not paid for months, 
her sinking fund plundered, her credit gone out of 
sight, borrowing every cent she spends at thirty per 
cent, is proud of the privilege of paying into the 
hands of her richest and most useless class this 
gratuity of twelve million reals simply because they 



54 CASTILTAN DAYS. 

are descended from the robber chiefs of the darker 



There is a curious little comedy played by the 
family of Medina Celi at every new coronation of 
a king of Spain. The Duke claims to be the right- 
ful heir to the throne. He is descended from Prince 
Ferdinand, who, dying before his father, Don Alon- 
so X., left his babies exposed to the cruel kindness 
of their uncle Sancho, who, to save them the 
troubles of the throne, assumed it himself and 
transmitted it to his children, — all this some half- 
dozen centuries ago. At every coronation the Duke 
formally protests ; an athletic and sinister-looking 
court headsman comes down to his palace in the 
Carrera San Geronimo, and by threats of immediate 
decapitation induces the Duke to sign a paper ab- 
dicating his rights to the throne of all the Spains. 
The Duke eats the Bourbon leek with inward pro- 
fanity, and feels that he has done a most clever and 
proper thing. This performance is apparently his 
only object and mission in life. This one sacrifice 
to tradition is what he is born for. 

The most important part of a Spaniard's signa- 
ture is the riibrica, or flourish with which it closes. 
The monarch's hand is set to public acts exclusively 
by this parafe. This evidently dates from the time 
when none but priests could write. In Madrid the 
mule-teams are driven tandem through the wide 
streets, because this was necessary in the ages when 
the streets were narrow. 






INFLUENCE OF TEADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 55 

There is even a show of argument sometimes 
to justify an adherence to things as they are. 
About a century ago there was an effort made by 
people who had lived abroad, and so become con- 
scious of the possession of noses, to have the streets 
of Madrid cleaned. The proposition was at first 
received with apathetic contempt, but when the 
innovators persevered they met the earnest and 
successful opposition of all classes. The Castilian 
savans gravely reported that the air of Madrid, 
which blew down from the snowy Guadarramas, 
was so thin and piercing that it absolutely needed 
the gentle corrective of the ordure-heaps to make 
it fit for human lungs. 

There is no nation in Europe in which so little 
washing is done. I do not think it is because the 
Spaniards do not want to be neat. They are, on the 
whole, the best-dressed people on the Continent. 
The hate of ablutions descends from those centuries 
of warfare with the Moors. The heathens washed 
themselves daily ; therefore a Christian should 
not. The monks, who were too lazy to bathe, 
taught their followers to be filthy by precept and 
example. Water was never to be applied exter- 
nally except in baptism. It was a treacherous ele- 
ment, and dallying with it had gotten Bathsheba 
and Susanna into no end of trouble. So when the 
cleanly infidels were driven out of Granada, the 
pious and hydrophobic Cardinal Ximenez persuaded 



56 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

the Catholic sovereigns to destroy the abomination 
of baths they left behind. Until very recently the 
Spanish mind has been unable to separate a certain 
idea of immorality from bathing. When Madame 
Daunoy, one of the sprightliest of observers, visited 
the court of Philip IV., she found it was considered 
shocking among the ladies of the best society to 
wash the face and hands. Once or twice a week 
they would glaze their pretty visages with the white 
of an egg. Of late years this prejudice has given 
way somewhat ; but it has lasted longer than any 
monument in Spain. 

These, however, are but trivial manifestations of 
that power of tradition which holds the Spanish 
intellect imprisoned as in a vice of iron. The 
whole life of the nation is fatally influenced by this 
blind reverence for things that have been. It may 
be said that by force of tradition Christian morality 
has been driven from individual life by religion, and 
honesty has been supplanted as a rule of public 
conduct by honor, — a wretched substitute in either 
case, and irreconcilably at war with the spirit of 
the age. 

The growth of this double fanaticism is easily 
explained ; it is the result of centuries of religious 
wars. From the hour when Pelayo, the first of the 
Asturian kings, successfully met and repulsed the 
hitherto victorious Moors in his rocky fortress of 
Covadonga, to the day when Boabdil the Unlucky 



INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 57 

saw for the last time through streaming tears the 
vermilion towers of Alhambra crowned with the 
banner of the cross, there was not a year of peace 
in Spain. No other nation has had such an ex- 
perience. Seven centuries of constant warfare, with 
three thousand battles ; this is the startling epitome 
of Spanish history from the Mahometan conquest 
to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. In this 
vast war there was laid the foundation of the na- 
tional character of to-day. 

Even before the conquering Moslem crossed from 
Africa, Spain was the most deeply religious country 
in Europe ; and by this I mean the country in which 
the Church was most powerful in its relations with 
the state. When the Council of Toledo, in 633, 
received the King of Castile, he fell on his face at 
the feet of the bishops before venturing to address 
them. "When the hosts of Islam had overspread 
the Peninsula, and the last remnant of Christianity 
had taken refuge in the inaccessible hills of the 
northwest, the richest possession they carried into 
these inviolate fastnesses was a chest of relics, — 
knuckle-bones of apostles and splinters of true 
crosses, in which they trusted more than in mortal 
arms. The Church had thus a favorable material 
to work upon in the years of struggle that followed. 
The circumstances all lent themselves to the scheme 
of spiritual domination. The fight was for the cross 
against the crescent ; the symbol of the quarrel was 

3* 



58 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



and 



visible and tangible. The Spaniards were poor 
ignorant and credulous. The priests were enough 
superior to lead and guide them, and not so far above 
them as to be out of the reach of their sympathies 
and their love. They marched with them. They 
shared their toils and dangers. They stimulated 
their hate of the enemy. They taught them that 
their cruel anger was the holy wrath of God. They 
held the keys of eternal weal or woe, and rewarded 
subservience to the priestly power with promises of 
everlasting felicity ; while the least symptom of re- 
bellion in thought or action was punished with 
swift death and the doom of endless flames. There 
was nothing in the Church which the fighting 
Spaniard could recognize as a reproach to himself. 
It was as bitter, as brave, as fierce, and revengeful 
as he. His credulity regarded it as divine, and wor- 
thy of blind adoration, and his heart went out to it 
with the sympathy of perfect love. 

In these centuries of war there was no com- 
merce, no manufactures, no settled industry of im- 
portance among the Spaniards. There was conse- 
quently no wealth, none of that comfort and ease 
which is the natural element of doubt and discus- 
sion. Science did not exist. The little learning 
of the time was exclusively in the hands of the 
priesthood. If from time to time an intelligent 
spirit struggled against the chain of unquestioning 
bigotry that bound him, he was rigorously silenced 












INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 59 

by prompt and bloody punishment. There seemed 
to be no need of discussion, no need of inculcation 
of doctrine. The serious work of the time was the 
war with the infidel. The clergy managed every- 
thing. The question, "What shall I do to be 
saved ? " never entered into those simple and igno- 
rant minds. The Church would take care of those 
who did her bidding. 

Thus it was that in the hammering of those 
struggling ages the nation became welded together 
in one compact mass of unquestioning, unreasoning 
faith, which the Church could manage at its own 
good pleasure. 

It was also in these times that Spanish honor 
took its rise. This sentiment is so nearly con- 
nected with that of personal loyalty that they may 
be regarded as phases of the same monarchical spirit. 
The rule of honor as distinguished from honesty 
and virtue is the most prominent characteristic 
of monarchy, and for that reason the political 
theorists from the time of Montesquieu have pro- 
nounced in favor of the monarchy as a more prac- 
ticable form of government than the republic, as re- 
quiring a less perfect and delicate machinery, men 
of honor being far more common than men of 
virtue. As in Spain, owing to special conditions, 
monarchy attained the most perfect growth and de- 
velopment which the world has seen, the sentiment 
of honor, as a rule of personal and political action, 



60 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



has there reached its most exaggerated form. I use 
this word, of course, in its restricted meaning of an 
intense sense of personal dignity, and readiness to 
sacrifice for this all considerations of interest and 
morality. 

This phase of the Spanish character is probahly 
derived in its germ from the Gothic blood of their 
ancestors. Their intense self-assertion has been in 
the Northern races, modified by the progress of in- 
telligence and the restraints of municipal law into 
a spirit of sturdy self-respect and a disinclination 
to submit to wrong. The Goths of Spain have un- 
fortunately never gone through this civilizing pro- 
cess. Their endless wars never gave an opportunity 
for the development of the purely civic virtues of 
respect and obedience to law. The people at large 
were too wretched, too harried by constant com- 
ing and ffoinsj of the waves of war, to do more than 
live, in a shiftless, hand-to-mouth way, from the pro- 
ceeds of their flocks and herds. There were no 
cities of importance within the Spanish lines. 
There was no opportunity for the growth of the 
true burgher spirit. 

There was no law to speak of in all these years 
except the twin despotism of the Church and the 
King. If there had been dissidence between them 
it might have been better for the people. But up 
to late years there has never been a quarrel be- 
tween the clergy and the Crown. Their interests 



so 
m 



INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 61 

were so identified that the dual tyranny was strong- 
er than even a single one could have been. The 
Crown always lending to the Church when neces- 
sary the arm of flesh, and the Church giving to the 
despotism of the sceptre the sanction of spiritual 
authority, an absolute power was established over 
body and soul. 

The spirit of individual independence inseparable 
from Gothic blood being thus forced out of its natu- 
ral channels of freedom of thought and municipal 
liberty, it remained in the cavaliers of the army of 
Spain in the same barbarous form which it had held 
in the Northern forests, — a physical self-esteem, and 
a readiness to fight on the slightest provocation. 
This did not interfere with the designs of the 
Church, and was rather a useful engine against its 
enemies. The absolute power of the Crown kept 
the spirit of feudal arrogance in check while the 
pressure of a common danger existed. The close 
cohesion which was so necessary in camp and 
Church prevented the tendency to disintegration, 
while the right of life and death was freely exer- 
cised by the great lords on their distant estates 
without interference. 

The predominating power of the Crown was too 
great and too absolute to result in the establish- 
ment of any fixed principle of obedience to law. 
The union of crozier and sceptre had been, if any- 
thing, too successful The King was so far above 



62 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

the nobility that there was no virtue in obeying 
him. His commission was divine, and he was no 
more confined by human laws than the stars and 
the comets. The obedience they owed and paid 
him was not respect to law. It partook of the 
character of religious worship, and left untouched 
and untamed in their savage hearts the instinct of 
resistance to all earthly claims of authority. 

Such was the condition of the public spirit of 
Spain at the beginning of that wonderful series of 
reigns from Ferdinand and Isabella to their great- 
grandson Philip II., which in less than a century 
raised Spain to the summit of greatness and built 
up a realm on which the sun never set. All the 
events of these prodigious reigns contributed to in- 
crease and intensify the national traits to which we 
have referred. The discovery of America flooded 
Europe with gold, and making the better class of 
Spaniards the richest people in the world naturally 
heightened their pride and arrogance. The long 
and eventful religious wars of Charles Y. and Philip 
II. gave employment and distinction to thousands 
of families whose vanity was nursed by the royal 
favor, and whose ferocious self-will was fed and 
pampered by the blood of heretics and the spoil of 
rebels. 

The national qualities of superstition and pride 
made the whole cavalier class a wieldy and effective 
weapon in the hands of the monarch, and the use 



INFLUENCE OF TKADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 63 

he made of them reacted upon these very traits, 
intensifying and affirming them. 

So terrible was this absolute command of the 
spiritual and physical forces of the kingdom pos- 
sessed by the monarchs of that day, that when the 
Eeformation flashed out, a beacon in the northern 
sky of political and religious freedom to the world, 
its light could not penetrate into Spain. There was 
a momentary struggle there, it is true. But so apa- 
thetic was the popular mind that the effort to bring 
it into sympathy with the vast movement of the age 
was hopeless from the beginning. The axe and the 
fagot made rapid work of the heresy. After only 
ten years of burnings and beheadings Philip II. 
could boast that not a heretic lived in his borders. 

Crazed by his success and his unquestioned om- 
nipotence at home, and drunken with the delirious 
dream that God's wrath was breathing through him 
upon a revolted world, he essayed to crush heresy 
throughout Europe; and in this mad and awful 
crime his people undoubtingly seconded him. In 
this he failed, the stars in their courses fighting 
against him, the God that his worship slandered 
taking sides against him. But history records what 
rivers of blood he shed in the long and desperate 
fight, and how lovingly and adoringly his people 
sustained him. He killed, in cold blood, some forty 
thousand harmless people for their faith, besides the 
vastly greater number whose lives he took in battle. 



64 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Yet this horrible monster, who is blackened with 
every crime at which humanity shudders, who had 
no grace of manhood, no touch of humanity, no 
gleam of sympathy which could redeem the gloomy 
picture of his ravening life, was beloved and wor- 
shipped as few men have been since the world has 
stood. The common people mourned him at his 
death with genuine unpaid sobs and tears. They 
will weep even yet at the story of his edifying 
death, — tins monkish vampire breathing his last 
with his eyes fixed on the cross of the mild Naza- 
rene, and tormented with impish doubts as to 
whether he had drunk blood enough to fit him for 
the company of the just ! 

His successors rapidly fooled away the stupendous 
empire that had filled the sixteenth century with 
its glory. Spain sank from the position of ruler of 
the world and queen of the seas to the place of a 
second-rate power, by reason of the weakening 
power of superstition and bad government, and 
because the people and the chieftains had never 
learned the lesson of law. 

The clergy lost no tittle of their power. They 
went on, gayly roasting their heretics and devouring 
the substance of the people, more prosperous than 
ever in those days of national decadence. Philip 
III. gave up the government entirely to the Duke 
of Lerma, who formed an alliance with the Church, 
and they led together a joyous life. In the succeed- 



INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 65 

ing reign the Church had become such a gnawing 
cancer upon the state that the servile Cortes had 
the pluck to protest against its inroads. There 
were in 1626 nine thousand monasteries for men, 
besides nunneries. There were thirty-two thousand 
Dominican and Franciscan friars. In the Diocese 
of Seville alone there were fourteen thousand chap- 
lains. There was a panic in the land. Every one 
was rushing to get into holy orders. The Church 
had all the bread. Men must be monks or starve. 
Zelus domus tucc comedit me, writes the British am- 
bassador, detailing these facts. 

We must remember that this was the age when 
the vast modern movement of inquiry and investi- 
gation was beginning. Bacon was laying in Eng- 
land the foundations of philosophy, casting with his 
prophetic intelligence the horoscope of unborn 
sciences. Descartes was opening new vistas of 
thought to the world. But in Spain, while the 
greatest names of her literature occur at this time, 
they aimed at no higher object than to amuse their 
betters. Cervantes wrote Quixote, but he died in a 
monk's hood ; and Lope de Vega was a familiar of 
the Inquisition. The sad story of the mind of 
Spain in this momentous period may be written in 
one word, — everybody believed and nobody in- 
quired. 

The country sank fast into famine and anarchy. 
The madness of the monks and the folly of the 



66 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

King expelled the Moors in 1609, and the loss of a 
million of the best mechanics and farmers of Spain 
struck the nation with a torpor like that of death. 
In 1650 Sir Edward Hyde wrote that " affairs were 
in huge disorder." People murdered each other for 
a loaf of bread. The marine perished for want of 
sailors. In the stricken land nothing flourished but 
the rabble of monks and the royal authority. 

This is the curious fact. The Church and the 
Crown had brought them to this misery, yet bet- 
ter than their lives the Spaniards loved the Church 
and the Crown. A word against either would have 
cost any man his life in those days. The old al- 
liance still hung together firmly. The Church 
bullied and dragooned the King in private, but it 
valued his despotic power too highly ever to slight 
it in public. There was something superhuman 
about the faith and veneration with which the 
people, and the aristocracy as well, regarded the 
person of the King. There was somewhat of 
gloomy and ferocious dignity about Philip II. which 
might easily bring a courtier to his knees ; but how 
can we account for the equal reverence that was 
paid to the ninny Philip III., the debauched trifler 
Philip IV., and the drivelling idiot Charles II. ? 

Yet all of these were invested with the same 
attributes of the divine. Their hands, like those 
of Midas, had the gift of making anything they 
touched too precious for mortal use. A horse they 



INFLUENCE OF TEADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 67 

had mounted could never "be ridden again. A 
woman they had loved must enter a nunnery when 
they were tired of her. 

When Buckingham came down to Spain with 
Charles of England, the Conde-Duque of Olivares 
was shocked and scandalized at the relation of 
confidential friendship that existed between the 
Prince and the Duke. The world never saw a 
prouder man than Olivares. His picture by Ve- 
lazquez hangs side by side with that of his royal 
master in Madrid. You see at a glance that the 
Count-Duke is the better man physically, mentally, 
morally. But he never dreamed it. He thought 
in his inmost heart that the best thing about him 
was the favor of the worthless fribble whom he 
governed. 

Through all the vicissitudes of Spanish history 
the force of these married superstitions — reverence 
for the Church as distinguished from the fear of 
God, and reverence for the King as distinguished 
from respect for law — have been the ruling charac- 
teristics of the Spanish mind. Among the fatal 
effects of this has been the extinction of rational 
piety and rational patriotism. If a man was not a 
good Catholic he was pretty sure to be an Atheist. 
If he did not honor the King he was an outlaw. 
The wretched story of Spanish dissensions beyond 
seas, and the loss of the vast American empire, is 
distinctly traceable to the exaggerated sentiment of 



68 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



personal honor, unrestrained by the absolute author- 
ity of the Crown. It seems impossible for the 
Spaniard of history and tradition to obey anything 
out of his sight. The American provinces have 
been lost one by one through petty quarrels and 
colonial rivalries. At the first word of dispute 
their notion of honor obliges them to fly to arms, 
and when blood has been shed reconciliation is 
impossible. So weak is the principle of territo- 
rial loyalty, that whenever the Peninsular govern- 
ment finds it necessary to overrule some violence of 
its own soldiers, these find no difficulty in march- 
ing over to the insurrection, or raising a fresh rebel- 
lion of their own. So little progress has there been 
in Spain from the middle ages to to-day in true 
political science, that we see such butchers as Ca- 
ballero and Valmaseda repeating to-day the crimes 
and follies of Cortes and Pamfilo Narvaez, of Pi- 
zarro and Almagro, and the revolt of the blood- 
thirsty volunteers of the Havana is a question of 
little time. 

It is true that in later years there has been the 
beginning of a better system of thought and discus- 
sion in Spain. But the old tradition still holds its 
own gallantly in Church and State. Nowhere in 
the world are the forms of religion so rigidly ob- 
served, and the precepts of Christian morality less 
regarded. The most facile beauties in Madrid are 
severe as Minervas on Holy Thursday. I have seen 




INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 69 

a dozen fast men at the door of a gambling-house fall 
on their knees in the dust as the Host passed by in 
the street. Yet the fair were no less frail, and the 
senoritos were no less profligate, for this unfeigned 
reverence for the outside of the cup and platter. 

In the domain of politics there is still the lament- 
able disproportion between honor and honesty. A 
high functionary cares nothing if the whole Salon del 
Prado talks of his pilferings, but he will risk his life 
in an instant if you call him no gentleman. The word 
" honor " is still used in all legislative assemblies, 
even in England and America. But the idea has 
gone by the board in all democracies, and the word 
means no more than the chamberlain's sword or the 
speaker's mace. The only criterion which the states- 
man of the nineteenth century applies to public acts 
is that of expediency and legality. The first ques- 
tion is, " Is it lawful ? " the second, " Does it pay ? " 
Both of these are questions of fact, and as such sus- 
ceptible of discussion and proof. The question of 
honor and religion carries us at once into the realm 
of sentiment where no demonstration is possible. 
But this is where every question is planted from 
the beginning in Spanish politics. Every public 
matter presents itself under this form : " Is it con- 
sistent with Spanish honor ? " and " Will it be to 
the advantage of the Eoman Catholic Apostolic 
Church ? " Now, nothing is consistent with Span- 
ish honor which does not recognize the Spain of to- 



70 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

day as identical with the Spain of the sixteenth 
century, and the bankrupt government of Madrid 
as equal in authority to the world-wide autocracy 
of Charles V. And nothing is thought to be to the 
advantage of the Church which does not tend to 
the concubinage of the spiritual and temporal power, 
and to the muzzling of speech and the drugging of 
the mind to sleep. 

Let any proposition be made which touches this 
traditional susceptibility of race, no matter how 
sensible or profitable it may be, and you hear in the 
Cortes and the Press, and, louder than all, among 
the idle cavaliers of the cafes, the wildest denuncia- 
tions of the treason that would consent to look at 
things as they are. The men who have ventured to 
support the common-sense view are speedily stormed 
into silence or timid self-defence. The sword of 
Guzman is brandished in the Chambers, the name 
of Pelayo is invoked, the memory of the Cid is 
awakened, and the proposition goes out in a blaze 
of patriotic pyrotechnics, to the intense satisfaction 
of the unthinking and the grief of the judicious. 
The senoritos go back to the serious business of their 
lives, — coffee and cigarettes, — with a genuine 
glow of pride in a country which is capable of the 
noble self-sacrifice of cutting off its nose to spite 
somebody else's face. 

But I repeat, the most favorable sign of the times 
is that this tyranny of tradition is losing its power. 



INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 71 

A great deal was done by the single act of driving 
out the Queen. This was a blow at superstition 
which gave to the whole body politic a most salu- 
tary shock. Never before in Spain had a revolution 
been directed at the throne. Before it was always 
an obnoxious ministry that was to be driven out. 
The monarch remained ; and the exiled outlaw of 
to-day might be premier to-morrow. But the fall 
of Novaliches at the Bridge of Alcolea decided the 
fate not only of the ministry but of the dynasty ; 
and while General Concha was waiting for the train 
to leave Madrid, Isabel of Bourbon and divine right 
were passing the Pyrenees. 

Although the moral power of the Church is still 
so great, the incorporation of freedom of worship 
in the Constitution of 1869 has been followed 
by a really remarkable development of freedom of 
thought. The proposition was regarded by some 
with horror and by others with contempt. One of 
the most enlightened statesmen in Spain once said 
to me, " The provision for freedom of worship in 
the Constitution is a mere abstract proposition, — 
it can never have any practical value except for 
foreigners. I cannot conceive of a Spaniard being 
anything but a Catholic." And so powerful was 
this impression in the minds of the Deputies that 
the article only accords freedom of worship to 
foreigners in Spain, and adds, hypothetically, that 
if any Spaniards should profess any other religion 



72 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

than the Catholic, they are entitled to the same 
liberty as foreigners. The Inquisition has been 
dead half a century, but you can see how its ghost 
still haunts the official mind of Spain. It is touch- 
ing to see how the broken links of the chain of 
superstition still hang about even those who im- 
agine they are defying it. As in their Christian 
burials, following unwittingly the example of the 
hated Moors, they bear the corpse with uncovered 
face to the grave, and follow it with the funeral 
torch of the Eomans, so the formula of the Church 
clings even to the mummery of the Atheists. Not 
long ago in Madrid a man and woman who be- 
longed to some fantastic order which rejected relig- 
ion and law had a child born to them in the 
course of things, and determined that it should 
begin life free from the taint of superstition. It 
should not be christened, it should be named, in 
the Name of Eeason. But they could not break 
loose from the idea of baptism. They poured a 
bottle of water on the shivering nape of the poor 
little neophyte, and its frail life went out in its first 
wheezing week. 

But in spite of all this a spirit of religious in- 
quiry is growing up in Spain, and the Church sees 
it and cannot prevent it. It watches the liberal 
newspapers and the Protestant prayer-meetings much 
as the old giant in Bunyan's dream glared at the 
passing pilgrims, mumbling and muttering toothless 



INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE. 73 

curses. It looks as if the dead sleep of uniformity 
of thought were to be broken at last, and Spain 
were to enter the healthful and vivifying atmos- 
phere of controversy. 

Symptoms of a similar change may be seen in the 
world of politics. The Republican party is only a 
year or two old, but what a vigorous and noisy in- 
fant it is ! With all its faults and errors, it seems 
to have the promise of a sturdy and wholesome 
future. It refuses to be bound by the memories of 
the past, but keeps its eyes fixed on the brighter 
possibilities to come. Its journals, undeterred by 
the sword of Guzman or the honor of all the 
Caballeros — the men on horseback — are advo- 
cating such sensible measures as justice to the 
Antilles, and the sale of outlying property, which 
costs more than it produces. Emilio Castelar, cast- 
ing behind him all the restraints of tradition, an- 
nounces as his idea of liberty * the right of all citi- 
zens to obey nothing but the law." There is no 
sounder doctrine than this preached in Manchester 
or Boston. If the Spanish people can be brought 
to see that God is greater than the Church, and that 
the law is above the king, the day of final deliver- 
ance is at hand. 



74 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



TAUEOMACHY. 

The "bull-fight is the national festival of Spain. 
The rigid Britons have had their fling at it for 
many years. The effeminate hadaud of Paris has de- 
claimed against its barbarity. Even the aristocracy 
of Spain has begun to suspect it of vulgarity and 
to withdraw from the arena the light of its noble 
countenance. But the Spanish people still hold it 
to their hearts and refuse to be weaned from it. 

" As Panera et Circenses was the cry 
Among the Roman populace of old, 
So Pan y Toros is the cry in Spain." 

It is a tradition which has passed into their national 
existence. They received it from nowhere. They 
have transmitted it nowhither except to their own 
colonies. In late years an effort has been made to 
transplant it, but with small success. There were 
a few bull-fights four years ago at Havre. There 
was a sensation of curiosity which soon died away. 
This year in London the experiment was tried, but 
was hooted out of existence, to the great displeasure 
of the Spanish journals, who said the ferocious 
Islanders would doubtless greatly prefer baiting to 
death a half-dozen Irish serfs from the estate of 



TAUROMACHY. 75 

Lord Fritters, — a gentle diversion in which we are 
led to believe the British peers pass their leisure 
hours. 

It is this monopoly of the bull-fight which so 
endears it to the Spanish heart. It is to thern con- 
clusive proof of the vast superiority of both the 
human and taurine species in Spain. The eminent 
torero, Pepe Illo, said : " The love of bulls is inhe- 
rent in man, especially in the Spaniard, among 
which glorious people there have been bull-fights 
ever since bulls were, because," adds Pepe, with 
that modesty which forms so charming a trait of 
the Iberian character, " the Spanish men are as 
much more brave than all other men, as the Spanish 
bull is more savage and valiant than all other bulls.' , 
The sport permeates the national life. I have seen 
it woven into the tapestry of palaces, and rudely 
stamped on the handkerchief of the peasant. It is 
the favorite game of children in the street. Loyal 
Spain was thrilled with joy recently on reading in 
its Paris correspondence that when the exiled 
Prince of Asturias went for a half-holiday to visit 
his Imperial comrade at the Tuileries, the urchins 
had a game of "toro" on the terrace, admirably 
conducted by the little Bourbon and followed up 
with great spirit by the little Montijo-Bonaparte. 

The bull-fight has not always enjoyed the royal 
favor. Isabella the Catholic would fain have abol- 
ished bathing and bull-fighting together. The 



76 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Spaniards, who willingly gave up their ablutions, 
stood stoutly by their bulls, and the energetic 
queen was baffled. Again when the Bourbons 
came in with Philip V., the courtiers turned up 
their thin noses at the coarse diversion, and in- 
duced the king to abolish it. It would not stay 
abolished, however, and Philip's successor built the 
present coliseum in expiation. The spectacle has, 
nevertheless, lost much of its early splendor by the 
hammering of time. Formerly the gayest and 
bravest gentlemen of the court, mounted on the 
best horses in the kingdom, went into the arena 
and defied the bull in the names of their lady- 
loves. Now the bull is baited and slain by hired 
artists, and the horses they mount are the sorriest 
hacks that ever went to the knacker. 

One of the most brilliant shows of the kind that 
was ever put upon the scene was the Festival of 
Bulls given by Philip IV. in honor of Charles I, 

When the Stuart came from far, 

Led by his love's sweet pain, 
to Mary, the guiding star 

That shone in the heaven of Spain." 

And the memory of that dazzling occasion was re- 
newed by Ferdinand VII. in the year of his death, 
when he called upon his subjects to swear allegiance 
to his baby Isabel. This festival took place in the 
Plaza Mayoi\ The king and court occupied the 
same balconies which Charles and his royal friend 



TAUROMACHY. 77 

and model had filled two centuries before. The 
champions were poor nobles, of good blood but 
scanty substance, who fought for glory and pen- 
sions, and had quadrilles of well-trained bull-fight- 
ers at their stirrups to prevent the farce from be- 
coming tragedy. The royal life of Isabel of Bour- 
bon was inaugurated by the spilled blood of one 
hundred bulls save one. The gory prophecy of 
that day has been well sustained. Not one year 
has passed since then free from blood shed in her 
cause. 

But these extraordinary attractions are not neces- 
sary to make a festival of bulls the most seductive 
of all pleasures to a Spaniard. On any pleasant 
Sunday afternoon, from Easter to All Souls, you 
have only to go into the street to see that there is 
some great excitement fusing the populace into one 
living mass of sympathy. All faces are turned one 
way, all minds are filled with one purpose. From 
the Puerta del Sol down the wide Alcala a vast 
crowd winds, solid as a glacier and bright as a kalei- 
doscope. From the grandee in his blazoned car- 
riage to the manola in her calico gown, there is no 
class unrepresented. Many a red hand grasps the 
magic ticket which is to open the realm of enchant- 
ment to-day, and which represents short commons 
for a week before. The pawnbrokers' shops have 
been very animated for the few preceding days. 
There is nothing too precious to be parted with for 



78 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

the sake of the bulls. Many of these smart girls 
have made the ultimate sacrifice for that coveted 
scrap of paper. They would leave their mother's 
cross with the children of Israel rather than not go. 
It is no cheap entertainment. The worst places in 
the broiling sun cost twenty cents, four reals ; and 
the boxes are sold usually at fifteen dollars. These 
prices are necessary to cover the heavy expenses of 
bulls, horses, and gladiators. 

The way to the bull-ring is one of indescribable 
animation. The cabmen drive furiously this day 
their broken-kneed nags, who will soon be found 
on the horns of the bulls/ — for this is the natural 
death of the Madrid cab-horse ; the omnibus teams 
dash gayly along with their shrill chime of bells ; 
there are the rude jests of clowns and the high 
voices of excited girls ; the water-venders droning 
their tempting cry, " Cool as the snow ! " the sellers 
of fans and the merchants of gingerbread picking 
up their harvests in the hot and hungry crowd. 

The Plaza de Toros stands just outside the monu- 
mental gate of the Alcala. It is a low, squat, prison- 
like circus of stone, stuccoed and whitewashed, with 
no pretence of ornament or architectural effect. 
There is no nonsense whatever about it. It is 
built for the killing of bulls and for no other pur- 
pose. Around it, on a day of battle, you will find 
encamped great armies of the lower class of Ma- 
drilenos, who being at financial ebb-tide, cannot 



TAUROMACHY. 79 

pay to go in. But they come all the same, to be 
in the enchanted neighborhood, to hear the shouts 
and roars of the favored ones within, and to seize 
any possible occasion for getting in. Who knows ? 
A caballero may come out and give them his check. 
An English lady may become disgusted and go 
home, taking away numerous lords whose places 
will be vacant. The sky may fall, and they may 
catch four reals' worth of larks. It is worth taking 
the chances. 

One does not soon forget the first sight of the 
full coliseum. In the centre is the sanded arena, 
surrounded by a high barrier. Around this rises 
the graded succession of stone benches for the peo- 
ple ; then numbered seats for the connoisseurs ; and 
above a row of boxes extending around the circle. 
The building holds, when full, some fourteen thou- 
sand persons ; and there is rarely any vacant space. 
For myself I can say that what I vainly strove to 
imagine in the coliseum at Rome, and in the more 
solemn solitude of the amphitheatres of Capua and 
Pompeii, came up before me with the vividness of 
life on entering the bull-ring of Madrid. This, and 
none other, was the classic arena. This was the 
crowd that sat expectant, under the blue sky, in the 
hot glare of the South, while the doomed captives 
of Dacia or the sectaries of Judea commended their 
souls to the gods of the Danube, or the Crucified of 
Galilee. Half the sand lay in the blinding sun. 



80 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Half the seats were illuminated by the fierce light. 
The other half was in shadow, and the dark crescent 
crept slowly all the afternoon across the arena as 
the sun declined in the west. 

It is hard to conceive a more brilliant scene. The 
women pnt on their gayest finery for this occasion. 
In the warm light, every bit of color flashes out, 
every combination falls naturally into its place. I 
am afraid the luxuriance of hues in the dress of the 
fair Iberians would be considered shocking in Broad- 
way, but in the vast frame and broad light of the 
Plaza the effect was very brilliant. Thousands of 
party-colored paper fans are sold at the ring. The 
favorite colors are the national red and yellow, and 
the fluttering of these broad, bright disks of color 
is dazzlingly attractive. There is a gayety of con- 
versation, a quick fire of repartee, shouts of recog- 
nition and salutation, which altogether make up a 
bewildering confusion. 

The weary young water-men scream their snow- 
cold refreshment. The orange-men walk with their 
gold-freighted baskets along the barrier, and throw 
their oranges with the most marvellous skill and 
certainty to people in distant boxes or benches. 
They never miss their mark. They will throw over 
the heads of a thousand people a dozen oranges 
into the outstretched hands of customers, so swiftly 
that it seems like one line of gold from the dealer 
to the buyer. 



TAUROMACHY. 81 

At length the blaf^ of a trumpet announces the 
clearing of the ring. The idlers who have been 
lounging in the arena are swept out by the alguaciles, 
and the hum of conversation gives way to an ex- 
pectant silence. When the last loafer has reluctant- 
ly retired, the great gate is thrown open, and the 
procession of the toreros enters. They advance in 
a glittering line : first the marshals of the day, 
then the picadors on horseback, then the matadors 
on foot surrounded each by his quadrille of chulos. 
They walk towards the box which holds the city 
fathers, under whose patronage the show is given, 
and formally salute the authority. This is all very 
classic, also, recalling the Ave Ccesar, morituri, etc. 
of the gladiators. It lacks, however, the solemnity 
of the Eoman salute, from those splendid fellows 
who would never all leave the arena alive. A bull- 
fighter is sometimes killed, it is true, but the per- 
centage of deadly danger is scarcely enough to make 
a spectator's heart beat as the bedizened procession 
comes flashing by in the sun. 

The municipal authority throws the bowing al- 
guacil a key, which he catches in his hat, or is 
hissed if he misses it. With this he unlocks the 
door through which the bull is to enter, and then 
scampers off with undignified haste through the 
opposite entrance. There is a bugle flourish, the 
door flies open, and the bull rushes out, blind with 
the staring light, furious with rage, trembling in 
4* p 



82 CASTILIANv DAYS. 

every limb. This is the most intense moment of 
the day. The glorious brute is the target of twelve 
thousand pairs of eyes. There is a silence as of 
death, while every one waits to see his first move- 
ment. He is doomed from the beginning ; the cur- 
tain has risen on a three-act tragedy, which will 
surely end with his death, but the incidents which 
are to fill the interval are all unknown. The minds 
and eyes of all that vast assembly know nothing 
for the time but the movements of that brute. He 
stands for an instant recovering his senses. He has 
been shot suddenly out of the darkness into that 
dazzling light. He sees around him a sight such 
as he never confronted before, — a wall of living 
faces lit up by thousands of staring eyes. He does 
not dwell long upon this, however ; in his pride 
and anger he sees a nearer enemy. The horsemen 
have taken position near the gate, where they sit 
motionless as burlesque statues, their long ashen 
spears, iron-tipped, in rest, their wretched nags 
standing blindfolded, with trembling knees, and 
necks like dromedaries, not dreaming of their near 
fate. The bull rushes, with a snort, at the nearest 
one. The picador holds firmly, planting his spear- 
point in the shoulder of the brute. Sometimes the 
bull flinches at this sharp and sudden punishment, 
and the picador, by a sudden turn to the left, gets 
away unhurt. Then there is applause for the torero 
and hisses for the bull. Some indignant amateurs 



TAUROMACHY. 83 

go so far as to call him cow, and to inform him that 
he is the son of his mother. But oftener he rushes 
in, not caring for the spear, and with one toss of Ms 
sharp horns tumbles horse and rider in one heap 
against the barrier and upon the sand. The capea- 
dores, the cloak-bearers, come fluttering around and 
divert the bull from his prostrate victims. The 
picador is lifted to his feet, — his iron armor not 
permitting him to rise without help, — and the 
horse is rapidly scanned to see if his wounds are 
immediately mortal. If not, the picador mounts 
again, and provokes the bull to another rush. A 
horse will usually endure two or three attacks be- 
fore dying. Sometimes a single blow from in front 
pierces the heart, and the blood spouts forth in a 
cataract. In this case the picador hastily dis- 
mounts, and the bridle and saddle are stripped in 
an instant from the dying brute. If a bull is 
energetic and rapid in execution, he will clear the 
arena in a few moments. He rushes at one horse 
after another, tears them open with his terrible 
"spears" ("horns" is a word never used in the 
ring), and sends them madly galloping over the 
arena, trampling out their gushing bowels as they 
fly. The assistants watch their opportunity, from 
time to time, to take the wounded horses out of the 
ring, plug up their gaping rents with tow, and sew 
them roughly up for another sally. It is incredible 
to see what these poor creatures will endure, — 



84 CASTILIAN DAYS. 






carrying their riders at a lumbering gallop over the 
ring, when their thin sides seem empty of entrails. 
Sometimes the bull comes upon the dead body of a 
horse he has killed. The smell of blood and the 
unmoving helplessness of the victim excite him to 
the highest pitch. He gores and tramples the car- 
cass, and tosses it in the air with evident enjoy- 
ment, until diverted by some living tormentor. 

You will occasionally see a picador nervous and 
anxious about his personal safety. They are igno- 
rant and superstitious, and subject to presenti- 
ments ; they often go into the ring with the impres- 
sion that their last hour has come. If one takes 
counsel of his fears and avoids the shock of combat, 
the hard-hearted crowd immediately discover it and 
rain maledictions on his head. I saw a picador 
once enter the ring as pale as death. He kept care- 
fully out of the way of the bull for a few minutes. 
The sharp-eyed Spaniards noticed it, and com- 
menced shouting, " Craven ! He wants to live for- 
ever!" They threw orange-skins at him, and at 
last, their rage vanquishing their economy, they 
pelted him with oranges. His pallor gave way to a 
flush of shame and anger. He attacked the bull so 
awkwardly, that the animal, killing his horse, threw 
him also with great violence. His hat flew off, his 
bald head struck the hard soil. He lay there as 
one dead, and was borne away lifeless. This molli- 
fied the indignant people, and they desisted from 
their abuse. 



TAUEOMACHY. 85 

A cowardly bull is much more dangerous than a 
courageous one, who lowers his head, shuts his eyes, 
and goes blindly at everything he sees. The last 
refuge of a bull in trouble is to leap the barrier/ 
where he produces a lively moment among the 
water-carriers and orange-boys and stage-carpen- 
ters. I once saw a bull, who had done very little 
execution in the arena, leap the barrier suddenly and 
toss an unfortunate carpenter from the gangway 
sheer into the ring. He picked himself up, laughed, 
saluted his friends, ran a little distance and fell, 
and was carried out dying. Fatal accidents are 
rarely mentioned in the newspapers, and it is con- 
sidered not quite the thing to talk about them. 

When the bull has killed enough horses, the first 
act of the play terminates. But this is an exceed- 
ingly delicate matter for the authorities to decide. 
The audience will not endure any economy in this 
respect. If the bull is enterprising and " volun- 
tary," he must have as many horses as he can dis- 
pose of. One day in Madrid the bulls operated 
with such activity that the supply of horses was 
exhausted before the close of the show, and the 
contractors rushed out in a panic and bought a half- 
dozen screws from the nearest cab-stand. If the 
president orders out the horses before their time, he 
will hear remarks by no means complimentary from 
the austere groundlings. 

.The second act is the play of the banderilleros, 



86 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

the flag-men. They are beautifully dressed and su- 
perbly built fellows, principally ftvm Andalusia, 
got up precisely like Figaro in the opera. Theirs 
is the most delicate and graceful operation of the 
bull-fight. They take a pair of barbed darts, with 
little banners fluttering at their ends, and provoke 
the bull to rush at them. At the instant he reaches 
them, when it seems nothing can save them, they 
step aside and plant the banderillas in the neck of 
the bull If the bull has been cowardly and slug- 
gish, and the spectators have called for " fire," darts 
are used filled with detonating powder at the base, 
which explode in the flesh of the bull. He dances 
and skips like a kid or a colt in his agony, which is 
very diverting to the Spanish mind. A prettier 
conceit is that of confining small birds in paper 
cages, which come apart when the banderilla is 
planted, and set the little fluttering captives free. 

Decking the bull with these torturing ornaments 
is the last stage in the apprenticeship of the chulo, 
before he rises to the dignity of matador, or killer. 
The matadors themselves on special occasions think 
it no derogation from their dignity to act as bande- 
rilleros. But they usually accompany the act with 
some exaggeration of difficulty that reaps for them 
a harvest of applause. Frascuelo sits in a chair 
and plants the irritating bannerets. Lagartijo lays 
his handkerchief on the ground and stand's upon 
it while he coifs the bull. A performance which 



TAUROMACHY. 87 

never fails to bring down the house is for the torero 
to await the nish of the bull, and when the bellow- 
ing monster comes at him with winking eyes and 
lowered head, to put his slippered foot between the 
horns, and vault lightly over his back. 

These chulos exhibit the most wonderful skill 
and address in evading the assault of the bull. 
They can almost always trick him by waving their 
cloaks a little out of the line of their flight. Some- 
times, however, the bull runs straight at the man, 
disregarding the flag, and if the distance is great to 
the barrier the danger is imminent; for swift as 
these men are, the bulls are swifter. Once I saw 
the bull strike the torero at the instant he vaulted 
over the barrier. He fell sprawling some distance 
the other side, safe, but terribly bruised and stunned. 
As soon as he could collect himself he sprang into 
the arena again, looking very seedy ; and the crowd 
roared, " Saved by miracle." I could but think of 
Basilio, who, when the many cried, " A miracle," 
answered, " Industria ! Industria ! " But these bull- 
fighters are all very pious, and glad to curry favor 
with the saints by attributing every success to their 
intervention. The famous matador, Paco Montes, 
fervently believed in an amulet he carried, and in 
the invocation of Our Lord of the True Cross. He 
called upon this special name in every tight place, 
and while other people talked of his luck he stoutly 
affirmed it was his faith that saved him ; often he 



88 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

said he saw the veritable pictwe of the Passion 
coming down between him and the ic^U, in answer 
to his prayers. At every bull-ring there is a little 
chapel in the refreshment-room where these devout 
ruffians can toss off a prayer or two in the intervals 
of work. A priest is always at hand with a conse- 
crated wafer, to visa the torero's passport who has 
to start suddenly for Paradise. It is not exactly 
regular, but the ring has built many churches and 
endowed many chapels, and must not be too rigidly 
regarded. In many places the chief boxes are re- 
served for the clergy, and prayers are hurried 
through an hour earlier on the day of combat. 

The final act is the death of the bull. It must 
come at last. His exploits in the early part of his 
career afford to the amateur some indication of the 
manner in which he will meet his end. If he is a 
generous, courageous brute, with more heart than 
brains, he will die gallantly and be easily killed. 
But if he has shown reflection, forethought, and 
that saving quality of the oppressed, suspicion, the 
matador has a serious work before him. The bull is 
always regarded from this objective standpoint. 
The more power of reason the brute has, the worse 
opinion the Spaniard has of him. A stupid crea- 
ture who rushes blindly on the sword of the mata- 
dor is an animal after his own heart. But if there 
be one into whose brute brain some glimmer of the 
awful truth has come, — and this sometimes hap- 



TAUKOMACHY. 89 

pens, — if he feels the solemn question at issue 
between him and his enemy, if he eyes the man 
and not the flag, if he refuses to be fooled by the 
waving lure, but keeps all his strength and all his 
faculties for his own defence, the soul of the Span- 
iard rises up in hate and loathing. He calls on the 
matador to kill him any way. If he will not rush 
at the flag, the crowd shouts for the demi-lune ; and 
the noble brute is houghed from behind, and your 
soul grows sick with shame of human nature, at the 
hellish glee with which they watch him hobbling 
on his severed legs. 

This seldom happens. The final act is usually an 
admirable study of coolness and skill against brute 
force. When the banderillas are all planted, and 
the bugles sound for the third time, the matador, 
the espada, the sword, steps forward with a modest 
consciousness of distinguished merit, and makes a 
brief speech to the corrcgiclor, offering in honor of 
the good city of Madrid to kill the bull. He turns 
on his heel, throws his hat by a dexterous back- 
handed movement over the barrier, and advances, 
sword and cape in hand, to where his noble enemy 
awaits him. The bull appears to recognize a more 
serious foe than any he has encountered. He stops 
short and eyes the new-comer curiously. It is al- 
ways an impressive picture : the tortured, mad- 
dened animal, whose thin flanks are palpitating 
with his hot breath, his coat one shining mass of 



90 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

blood from the darts and the spear-thrusts, his mas- 
sive neck still decked as in mockery with the flut- 
tering flags, his fine head and muzzle seeming sharp- 
ened by the hour's terrible experience, his formidable 
horns crimsoned with onset ; in front of this fiery 
bulk of force and courage, the slight, sinewy frame of 
the killer, whose only reliance is on his coolness and 
his intellect. I never saw a matador come care- 
lessly to his work. He is usually pale and alert. 
He studies the bull for a moment with all his eyes. 
He waves the blood-red engano, or lure, before his 
face. If the bull rushes at it with his eyes shut 
the work is easy. He has only to select his own 
stroke and make it. But if the bull is jealous and 
sly, it requires the most careful management to kill 
him. The disposition of the bull is developed by a 
few rapid passes of the red flag. This must not be 
continued too long : the tension of the nerves of the 
auditory will not bear trifling. I remember one day 
the crowd was aroused to fury by a bugler from 
the adjoining barracks playing retreat at the mo- 
ment of decision. All at once the matador seizes 
the favorable instant. He poises his sword as the 
bull rushes upon him. The point enters just be- 
tween the left shoulder and the spine ; the long blade 
glides in up to the hilt. The bull reels and staggers 
and dies. 

Sometimes the matador severs the vertebrae. 
The effect is like magic. He lays the point of his 



TAUEOMACHY. 91 

sword between the bull's horns, as lightly as a lady 
who touches her cavalier with her fan, and he falls 
dead as a stone. 

If the blow is a clean, well-delivered one, the 
enthusiasm of the people is unbounded. Their ap- 
proval comes up in a thunderous shout of, " Well 
done ! Valiente ! Viva ! " A brown shower of 
cigars rains on the sand. The victor gathers them 
up : they fill his hands, his pockets, his hat. He 
gives them to his friends, and the aromatic shower 
continues. Hundreds of hats are flung into the 
ring. He picks them up and shies them back to 
their shouting owners. Sometimes a dollar is mingled 
with the flying compliments ; but the enthusiasm 
of the Spaniard rarely carries him so far as that. 
For ten minutes after a good estocada, the matador 
is the most popular man in Spain. 

But the trumpets sound again, the door of the 
Toril flies open, another bull comes rushing out, and 
the present interest quenches the past. The play 
begins again, with its sameness of purpose and its 
infinite variety of incident. 

It is not quite accurate to say, as is often said, 
that the bull-fighter runs no risk. El Tato, the first 
sword of Spain, lost his leg in 1869, and his life 
was saved by the coolness and courage of Lagartijo, 
who succeeded him in the championship, and who 
was terribly wounded in the foot the next summer. 
Arjona killed a bull in the same year, which tossed 



92 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

and ruptured him after receiving his death-blow. 
Pepe Illo died in harness, on the sand. Every year 
picadors, chulos, and such small deer are killed, 
without gossip. I must copy the inscription on the 
sword which Tato presented to Lagartijo, as a speci- 
men of tauromachian literature : — 

" If, as philosophers say, gratitude is the tribute 
of noble souls, accept, dear Lagartijo, this present; 
preserve it as a sacred relic, for it symbolizes the 
memory of my glories, and is at the same time the 
mute witness of my misfortune. With it I killed 
my last bull named Peregrino, bred by D. Vicente 
Martinez, fourth of the fight of the 7th June, 1869, 
in which act I received the wound which has caused 
the amputation of my right leg. The will of man 
can do nothing against the designs of Providence. 
Nothing but resignation is left to thy affectionate 
friend, Antonio Sanchez [Tato]." 

It is in consideration of the mingled skill and 
danger of the trade, that such enormous fees "are 
paid the principal performers. The leading swords- 
men receive about three hundred dollars for each 
performance, and they are eagerly disputed by the 
direction of all the arenas of Spain. In spite of 
these large wages, they are rarely rich. They are 
as wasteful and improvident as gamblers. Tato, 
when he lost his leg, lost his means of subsistence, 
and his comrades organized one or two benefits to 
keep him from want. Cuchares died in the Havana, 
and left no provision for his family. 



TAUROMACHY. 93 

There is a curious naivete in the play -bill of a 
bull-fight, the only conscientious public document 
I have seen in Spain. You know how we of North- 
ern blood exaggerate the attractions of all sorts of 
shows, trusting to the magnanimity of the audience. 
" He war n't nothing like so little as that," con- 
fesses Mr. Magsman, "but where 's your dwarf 
what is ? " There are few who have the moral 
courage to demand their money back because they 
counted but thirty-nine thieves when the bills 
promised forty. But the management of the Ma- 
drid bull-ring knows its public too well to promise 
more than it is sure of performing. It announces 
six bulls, and positively no more. It says there 
will be no, use of bloodhounds. It promises two 
picadors, with three others in reserve, and warns 
the public that if all five become inutilized in the 
combat, no more will be issued. With so fair a 
preliminary statement, what crowd, however in- 
flammable, could mob the management ? 

Some industrious and ascetic statistician has 
visited Spain and interested himself in the bull- 
ring. Here are some of the results of his re- 
searches. In 1864 the number of places in all the 
taurine establishments of Spain was 509,283, of 
which 246,813 belonged to the cities, and 262,470 
to the country. 

In the year 1864, there were 427 bull-fights, of 
which 294 took place in the cities, and 133 in the 



94 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



country towns. The receipts of ninety-eight bull- 
rings in 1864 reached the enormous sum of two hun- 
dred and seventeen and a half millions of reals (near- 
ly $ 11,000,000). The 427 bull-fights which took 
place in Spain during the year 1864 caused the 
death of 2,989 of these fine animals, and about 
7,473 horses, — something more than half the num- 
ber of the cavalry of Spain. These wasted victims 
could have ploughed three hundred thousand hec- 
tares of land, which would have produced a million 
and a half hectolitres of grain, worth eighty millions 
of reals ; all this without counting the cost of the 
slaughtered cattle, worth say seven or eight millions, 
at a moderate calculation. 

Thus far the Arithmetic Man ; to whom responds 
the tauromachian aficionado : That the bulk of this 
income goes to purposes of charity ; that were there 
no bull-fights, bulls of good race would cease to 
be bred ; that nobody ever saw a horse in a bull- 
ring that could plough a furrow of a hundred yards 
without giving up the ghost ; that the nerve, dex- 
terity, and knowledge of brute nature gamed in the 
arena is a good thing to have in the country ; that, 
in short, it is our way of amusing ourselves, and if 
you don't like it you can go home and cultivate 
prize-fighters, or kill two-year-old colts on the race- 
course, or murder jockeys in hurdle-races, or break 
your own necks in steeple-chases, or in search of 
wilder excitement thicken your blood with beer 
or burn your souls out with whiskey. 






TAUROMACHY. 95 

And this is all we get by our well-meant effort 
to convince Spaniards of the brutality of bull- 
fights. Must Chicago be virtuous before I can ob- 
ject to Madrid ale, and say that its cakes are unduly 
gingered ? 

Yet even those who most stoutly defend the 
bull-fight feel that its glory has departed and that 
it has entered into the era of full decadence. I 
was talking one evening with a Castilian gentle- 
man, one of those who cling with most persistence 
to the national traditions, and he confessed that the 
noble art was wounded to death. " I do not refer, 
as many do, to the change from the old times, when 
gentlemen fought on their own horses in the ring. 
That was nonsense, and could not survive the time 
of Cervantes. Life is too short to learn bull-fight- 
ing. A grandee of Spain, if he knows anything 
else, would make a sorry torero. The good times 
of the art are more modern. I saw the short day 
of the glory of the ring when I was a boy. There 
was a race of gladiators then, such as the world 
will never see again, — mighty fighters before the 
king. Pepe Illo and Costillares, Eomero and Paco 
Montes, — the world does not contain the stuff to 
make their counterparts. They were serious, ear- 
nest men. They would have let their right arms 
wither before they would have courted the applause 
of the mob by killing a bull outside of the severe 
traditions. Compare them with the men of to-day, 



96 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



with your Rafael Molina, who allows himself to be 
gored, playing with a heifer ; with your frivolous 
boys like Frascuelo. I have seen the ring con- 
vulsed with laughter as that buffoon strutted across 
the arena, flirting his mideta as a manola does her 
skirts, the bewildered bull not knowing what to 
make of it. It was enough to make Illo turn in his 
bloody grave. 

" Why, my young friend, I remember when bulls 
were a dignified and serious matter ; when we kept 
account of their progress from their pasture to the 
capital. We had accounts of their condition by 
couriers and carrier-pigeons. On the day when 
they appeared it was a high festival in the court. 
All the sombreros in Spain were there, the ladies in 
national dress with white mantillas. The young 
queen always in her palco (may God guard her). 
The fighters of that day were high-priests of art ; 
there was something of veneration in the regard 
that was paid them. Duchesses threw them bou- 
quets with billets-doux. Gossip and newspapers 
have destroyed the romance of common life. 

" The only pleasure I take in the Plaza de Toros 
now is at night. The custodians know me and let 
me moon about in the dark. When all that is ig- 
noble and mean has faded away with the daylight, 
it seems to me the ghosts of the old time come back 
upon the sands. I can fancy the patter of light 
hoofs, the glancing of spectral horns. I can imagine 






TAUKOMACHY. 97 

tlie agile tread of Eomero, the deadly thrust of 
Montes, the whisper of long- vanished applause, and 
the clapping of ghostly hands. I am growing too 
old for such skylarking, and I sometimes come away 
with a cold in my head. But you will never see a 
bull-fight you can enjoy as I do these visionary fes- 
tivals, where memory is the corregidor, and where 
the only spectators are the stars and I." 



98 CASTILIAN DAYS. 






EED-LETTEE DAYS. 

No people embrace more readily than the 
Spaniards the opportunity of spending a day with- 
out work. Their frequent holidays are a relic of 
the days when the Church stood between the peo- 
ple and their taskmasters, and fastened more firmly 
its hold upon the hearts of the ignorant and over- 
worked masses, by becoming at once the fountain 
of salvation in the next world, and of rest in this. 
The government rather encouraged this growth of 
play-days, as the Italian Bourbons used to foster 
mendicancy, by way of keeping the people as un- 
thrifty as possible. Lazzaroni are so much more 
easily managed than burghers ! 

It is only the holy days that are successfully 
celebrated in Spain. The state has tried of late 
years to consecrate to idle parade a few revolution- 
ary dates, but they have no vigorous national life. 
They grow feebler and more colorless year by year, 
because they have no depth of earth. 

The most considerable of these national festivals 
is the 2d of May, which commemorates the slaughter 
of patriots in the streets of Madrid by Murat. This 
is a political holiday which appeals more strongly 



RED-LETTER DAYS. 99 

to the national character of the Spaniards than any- 
other. The mingled pride of race and ignorant hate 
of everything foreign which constitutes that singular 
passion called Spanish patriotism, or Espanolismo, 
is fully called into play by the recollections of the 
terrible scenes of their war of independence, which 
drove out a foreign king, and brought back into 
Spain a native despot infinitely meaner and more 
injurious. It is an impressive study in national 
character and thought, this self-satisfaction of even 
liberal Spaniards at the reflection that, by a vast 
and supreme effort of the nation, after countless 
sacrifices and with the aid of coalesced Europe, they 
exchanged Joseph Bonaparte for Ferdinand VII. and 
the Inquisition. But the victims of the Dos de 
Mayo fell fighting. Daoiz, Velarde, and Buiz were 
bayoneted at their guns, scorning surrender. The 
alcalde of Mostoles, a petty village of Castile, 
called on Spain to rise against the tyrant. And 
Spain obeyed the summons of this cross-roads jus- 
tice. The contempt of probabilities, the Quixotism 
of these successive demonstrations, endear them to 
the Spanish heart. 

Every 2d of May the city of Madrid gives up the 
day to funeral honors to the dead of 1808. The city 
government, attended by its Maceros, in their gor- 
geous robes of gold and scarlet, with silver maces 
and long white plumes ; the public institutions of 
all grades, with invalids and veterans and charity 



100 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



children ; a large detachment of the army and navy, 
— form a vast procession at the Town Hall, and, 
headed hy the Supreme Government, march to slow 
music through the Puerta del Sol and the spacious 
Alcala street to the granite obelisk in the Prado 
which marks the resting-place of the patriot dead. 
I saw the Eegent of the kingdom, surrounded by 
his cabinet, sauntering all a summer's afternoon 
under a blazing sun, over the dusty mile that sepa- 
rates the monument from the Ayuntamiento. The 
Spaniards are hopelessly inefficient in these matters. 
The people always fill the line of march, and a 
rivulet of procession meanders feebly through a 
wilderness of mob. It is fortunate that the crowd 
is more entertaining than the show. 

The Church has a very indifferent part in this 
ceremonial. It does nothing more than celebrate a 
Mass in the shade of the dark cypresses in the 
Place of Loyalty, and then leaves the field clear to 
the secular power. But this is the only purely 
civic ceremony I ever saw in Spain. The Church 
is lord of the holidays for the rest of the year. 

In the middle of May comes the feast of the 
ploughboy patron of Madrid, — San Isidro. He 
was a true Madrileno in tastes, and spent his time 
lying in the summer shade or basking in the winter 
sunshine, seeing visions, while angels came down 
from heaven and did his farm chores for him. The 
angels are less amiable nowadays, but every true 






RED-LETTER DAYS. 101 

child of Madrid reveres the example and envies 
the success of the San Isidro method of doing busi- 
ness. In the process of years this lazy lout has be- 
come a great Saint, and his bones have done more 
extensive and remarkable miracle-work than any 
equal amount of phosphate in existence. In des- 
perate cases of sufficient rank the doctors throw up 
the sponge and send for Isidro's urn, and the drug- 
ging having ceased, the noble patient frequently re- 
covers, and much honor and profit comes thereby 
to the shrine of the Saint. There is something of 
the toady in Isidro's composition. You never hear of 
his curing any one of less than princely rank. I read 
in an old chronicle of Madrid, that once when Queen 
Isabel the Catholic was hunting in the hills that 
overlook the Manzanares, near what is now the 
oldest and quaintest quarter of the capital, she 
killed a bear of great size and ferocity ; and doubt- 
less thinking it might not be considered lady-like 
to have done it unassisted, she gave San Isidro the 
credit of the lucky blow and built him a nice new 
chapel for it near the Church of San Andres. If 
there are any doubters, let them go and see the 
chapel, as I did. When the allied armies of the 
Christian Kings of Spain were seeking for a passage 
through the hills to the Plains of Tolosa, a shepherd 
appeared and led them straight to victory and end- 
less fame. After the battle, which broke the Moorish 
power forever in Central Spain, instead of looking 



102 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

for the shepherd and paying him handsomely for 
his timely scout-service, they found it more pious 
and economical to say it was San Isidro in person 
who had kindly made himself flesh for this occasion. 
By the great altar in the Cathedral of Toledo stand 
side by side the statues of Alonso VIII., the Chris- 
tian commander, and San Isidro brazenly swelling 
in the shepherd garb of that unknown guide who 
led Alonso and his chivalry through the tangled 
defiles of the Sierra Morena. 

His fete is the Derby Day of Madrid. The 
whole town goes out to his Hermitage on the fur- 
ther banks of the Manzanares, and spends a day or 
two of the soft spring weather in noisy frolic. The 
little church stands on a bare brown hill, and all 
about it is an improvised village consisting half of 
restaurants and the other half of toy-shops. The 
principal traffic is in a pretty sort of glass whistle 
which forms the stem of an artificial rose, worn in 
the button-hole in the intervals of tooting, and little 
earthen pig-bells, whose ringing scares away the 
lightning. There is but one duty of the day to 
flavor all its pleasures. The faithful must go into 
the oratory, pay a penny, and kiss a glass-covered 
relic of the Saint which the attendant ecclesiastic 
holds in his hand. The bells are rung violently 
until the church is full ; then the doors are shut 
and the kissing begins. They are very expeditious 
about it. The worshippers drop on their knees by 



RED-LETTEE DAYS. 103 

platoons before the railing. The lohg-robed relic- 
keeper puts the precious trinket rapidly to their 
lips ; an acolyte follows with a saucer for the cash. 
The glass grows humid with many breaths. The 
priest wipes it with a dirty napkin from time to 
time. The multitude advances, kisses, pays, and 
retires, till all have their blessing ; then the doors 
are opened and they all pass out, — the bells ring- 
ing furiously for another detachment. The pleas- 
ures of the day are like those of all fairs and pub- 
lic merry-making. Working people come to be idle, 
and idle people come to have something to do. 
There is much eating and little drinking. The 
milk-stalls are busier than the wine-shops. The 
people are gay and jolly, but very decent and clean 
and orderly. To the east of the Hermitage, over 
and beyond the green cool valley, the city rises on 
its rocky hills, its spires shining in the cloudless 
blue. Below on the emerald meadows there are 
the tents and wagons of those who have come from 
a distance to the Eomeria. The sound of guitars 
and the drone of peasant songs come up the hill, 
and groups of men are leaping in the wild barbaric 
dances of Iberia. The scene is of another day and 
time. The Celt is here, lord of the land. You can 
see these same faces at Donnybrook Fair. These 
large-mouthed, short-nosed, rosy-cheeked peasant- 
girls are called Dolores and Catalina, but they might 
be called Bridget and Kathleen. These strapping 



104 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

fellows, with long simian upper lips, with "brown 
leggings and patched, mud-colored overcoats, who 
are leaping and swinging their cudgels in that 
Pyrrhic round are as good Tipperary boys as ever 
mobbed an agent or pounded, twenty to one, a 
landlord to death. The same unquestioning, fer- 
vent faith, the same superficial good-nature, the 
same facility to be amused, and at bottom the same 
cowardly and cruel blood-thirst. What is this 
mysterious law of race which is stronger than time, 
or varying climates, or changing institutions ? Which 
is cause, and which is effect, race or religion ? 

The great Church holiday of the year is Corpus 
Christi. On this day the Host is carried in solemn 
procession through the principal streets, attended by 
the high officers of state, several battalions of each 
arm of the service in fresh bright uniforms, and a 
vast array of ecclesiastics in the most gorgeous 
stoles and chasubles their vestiary contains. The 
windows along the line of march are gayly decked 
with flags and tapestry. Work is absolutely sus- 
pended, and the entire population dons its holiday 
garb. The Puerta del Sol — at this season blazing 
with relentless light — is crowded with patient 
Madrilenos in their best clothes, the brown-cheeked 
maidens with flowing silks as in a ball-room, and 
with no protection against the ardent sky but the 
fluttering fan they hold in their ungloved hands. 
As everything is behind time in this easy-going 



BED-LETTER DAYS. 105 

land, there are two or three hours of broiling gossip 
on the glowing pavement before the Sacred Presence 
is announced by the ringing of silver bells. As the 
superb structure of filigree gold goes by, a movement 
of reverent worship vibrates through the crowd. For- 
getful of silks and broadcloth and gossip, they fall 
on their knees in one party-colored mass, and, bow- 
ing their heads and beating their breasts, they mut- 
ter their mechanical prayers. There are thinking 
men who say these shows are necessary ; that the 
Latin mind must see with bodily eyes the thing it 
worships, or the worship will fade away from its 
heart. If there were no cathedrals and masses, 
they say, there would be no religion ; if there were 
no king, there would be no law. But we should 
not accept too hurriedly this ethnological theory of 
necessity, which would reject all principles of prog- 
ress and positive good, and condemn half the human 
race to perpetual childhood. There was a time when 
we Anglo-Saxons built cathedrals and worshipped 
the king. Look at Salisbury and Lincoln and Ely ; 
read the history of the growth of parliaments. 
There is nothing more beautifully sensuous than 
the religious spirit that presided over those master 
works of English Gothic ; there is nothing in life 
more abject than the relics of the English love and 
fear of princes. But the steady growth of centuries 
has left nothing but the outworn shell of the old 
religion and the old loyalty. The churches and the 

5* 



106 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

castles still exist. The name of the king still is 
extant in the Constitution. They remain as objects 
of taste and tradition, hallowed by a thousand 
memories of earlier days, but, thanks be to God 
who has given us the victory, the English race is 
now incapable of making a new cathedral or a new 
king. 

Let us not in our safe egotism deny to others the 
possibility of a like improvement. 

This summery month of June is rich in saints. 
The great apostles, John, Peter, and Paul, have their 
anniversaries on its closing days, and the shortest 
nights of the year are given up to the riotous eat- 
ing of fritters in their honor. I am afraid that the 
progress of luxury and love of ease has wrought a 
change in the observance of these festivals. The 
feast of midsummer night is called the Verbena of 
St. John, which indicates that it was formerly a 
morning solemnity, as the vervain could not be 
hunted by the youths and maidens of Spain with 
any success or decorum at midnight. But of late 
years it may be that this useful and fragrant herb 
has disappeared from the tawny hills of Castile. It 
is sure that midsummer has grown too warm for 
any field work. So that the Madrilenos may be 
pardoned for spending the day napping, and swarm- 
ing into the breezy Prado in the light of moon and 
stars and gas. The Prado is ordinarily the prome- 
nade of the better classes, but every Spanish family 






RED-LETTER DAYS. 107 

has its John, Paul, and Peter, and the crowded 
barrios of Toledo and the Penuelas pour out their 
ragged hordes to the popular festival. The scene 
has a strange gypsy wildness. Prom the round 
point of Atocha to where Cybele, throned among 
spouting waters, drives southward her spanking 
team of marble lions, the park is filled with the 
merry roysterers. At short intervals are the busy 
groups of fritter merchants ; over the crackling fire 
a great caldron of boiling oil ; beside it a mighty 
bowl of dough. The bunolero, with the swift pre- 
cision of machinery, dips his hand into the bowl 
and makes a delicate ring of the tough dough, which 
he throws into the bubbling caldron. It remains 
but a few seconds, and his grimy acolyte picks it 
out with a long wire and throws it on the tray for 
sale. They are eaten warm, the droning cry con- 
tinually sounding, " Bunuelos ! Calientitos ! " There 
must be millions of these oily dainties consumed 
on every night of the Verbena. Por the more 
genteel revellers, the Don Juans, Pedros, and Pablos 
of the better sort, there are improvised restaurants 
built of pine planks after sunset and gone before 
sunrise. But the greater number are bought and 
eaten by the loitering crowd from the tray of the 
fritterman. It is like a vast gitano-camp. The 
hurrying crowd which is going nowhere, the blazing 
fires, the cries of the venders, the songs of the majos 
under the great trees of the Paseo, the purposeless 



108 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

hurly-burly, and above, the steam of the boiling oil 
and the dust raised by the myriad feet, form to- 
gether a striking and vivid picture. The city is 
more than usually quiet. The stir of life is localized 
in the Prado. The only busy men in town are 
those who stand by the seething oil-pots and manu- 
facture the brittle forage of the browsing herds. It 
is a jealous business, and requires the undivided 
attention of its professors. The ne sutor ultra ere- 
joidam of Spanish proverb is "Bunolero haz tus 
bunuelos," — Fritterman, mind thy fritters. 

With the long days and cooler airs of the autumn 
begin the different fairs. These are relics of the 
times of tyranny and exclusive privilege, when for 
a few days each year, by the intervention of the 
Church, or as a reward for civic service, full liberty 
of barter and sale was allowed to all citizens. This 
custom, more or less modified, may be found in 
most cities of Europe. The boulevards of Paris 
swarm with little booths at Christmas-time, which 
begin and end their lawless commercial life within 
the week. In Vienna, in Leipsic, and other cities, 
the same waste-weir of irregular trade is periodical- 
ly opened. These fairs begin in Madrid with the 
autumnal equinox, and continue for some weeks in 
October. They disappear from the Alcala to break 
out with renewed virulence in the avenue of Atocha, 
and girdle the city at last with a belt of booths. 
While they last they give great animation and spirit 



EED-LETTER DAYS. 109 

to the street life of the town. You can scarcely 
make your way among the heaps of gaudy shawls 
and handkerchiefs, cheap laces and illegitimate 
jewels,, that cumber the pavement. When the 
Jews were driven out of Spain, they left behind 
the true genius of bargaining. A nut-brown maid 
is attracted by a brilliant red and yellow scarf. She 
asks the sleepy merchant nodding before his wares, 
" What is this rag worth ? " He answers with pro- 
found indifference, " Ten reals." 

" Hombre ! Are you dreaming or crazy ? " She 
drops the coveted neck-gear, and moves on, ap- 
parently horror-stricken. 

The chapman calls her back peremptorily : " Don't 
be rash ! The scarf is worth twenty reals, but for 
the sake of Santisima Maria I offered it to you for 
half-price. Very well ! You are not suited. What 
will you give ? " 

" Caramba ! Am I buyer and seller as well ? 
The thing is worth three reals ; more is a robbery." 

" Jesus ! Maria ! Jose I and all the family ! Go 
thou with God ! We cannot trade. Sooner than 
sell for less than eight reals I will raise the cover 
of my brains ! Go thou ! It is eight of the morn- 
ing, and still thou dreamest." 

She lays down the scarf reluctantly, saying, 
" Five ? " But the outraged mercer snorts scorn- 
fully, " Eight is my last word ! Go to ! " 

She moves away, thinking how well that scarf 



110 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

would look in the Apollo Gardens, and casts over 
her shoulder a Parthian glance and bid, " Six ! " 

" Take it ! It is madness, but I cannot waste my 
time in bargaining." 

Both congratulate themselves on the operation. 
He would have taken five, and she would have 
given seven. How trade would suffer if we had 
windows in our breasts ! 

The first days of November are consecrated to all 
the saints, and to the souls of all the blessed dead. 
They are observed in Spain with great solemnity ; 
but as the cemeteries are generally of the dreariest 
character, bare, bleak, and most forbidding under 
the ashy sky of the late autumn, the days are de- 
prived of that exquisite sentiment that pervades 
them in countries where the graves of the dead are 
beautiful. There is nothing more touching than 
these offerings of memory you see every year in 
Mont Parnasse and Pere-la-Chaise. Apart from all 
beliefs, there is a mysterious influence for good exerted 
upon the living by the memory of the beloved dead. 
On all hearts not utterly corrupt, the thoughts that 
come by the graves of the departed fall like dew 
from heaven, and quicken into life purer and higher 
resolves. 

In Spain, where there is nothing but desolation 
in grave-yards, the churches are crowded instead, 
and the bereaved survivors commend to God their 
departed friends and their own stricken hearts in 



RED-LETTER DAYS. Ill 

the dim and perfumed aisles of temples made with 
hands. A taint of gloom thus rests upon the recol- 
lection and the prayer, far different from the con- 
solation that comes with the free air and the sun- 
shine, and the infinite blue vault, where Nature 
conspires with revelation to comfort and cherish and 
console. 

Christmas apparently comes in Spain on no other 
mission than that referred to in the old English 
couplet, " bringing good cheer." The Spaniards are 
the most frugal of people, but during the days that 
precede their Noche Buena, their Good Night, they 
seem to be given up as completely to cares of the 
commissariat as the most eupeptic of Germans. 
Swarms of turkeys are driven in from the sur- 
rounding country, and taken about the streets by 
their rustic herdsmen, making the roads gay with 
their scarlet wattles, and waking rural memories by 
their vociferous gobbling. The great market-place 
of the season is the Plaza Mayor. The ever-fruit- 
ful provinces of the South are laid under contribu- 
tion, and the result is a wasteful show of tropical 
luxuriance that seems most incongruous under the 
wintry sky. There are mountains of oranges and 
dates, brown hillocks of nuts of every kind, store 
of every product of this versatile soil. The air is 
filled with nutty and fruity fragrance. Under the 
ancient arcades are the stalls of the butchers, rich 
with the mutton of Castile, the hams of Estrema- 



112 " CASTILIAN DAYS. 

dura, and the hero-nourishing bull-beef of Andalu- 
sian pastures. 

At night the town is given up to harmless racket. 
Nowhere has the tradition of the Latin Saturnalia 
been fitted with less change into the Christian 
calendar. Men, women, and children of the prole- 
tariat — the unemancipated slaves of necessity — 
go out this night to cheat their misery with noisy 
froJic. The owner of a tambourine is the equal of 
a peer ; the proprietor of a guitar is the captain of 
his hundred. They troop through the dim city with 
discordant revel and song. They have little idea of 
music. Every one sings and sings ill. Every one 
dances, without grace or measure. Their music is 
a modulated howl of the East. Their dancing is 
the savage leaping of barbarians. There is no lack 
of couplets, religious, political, or amatory. I heard 
one ragged woman with a brown baby at her breast 
go shrieking through the Street of the Magdalen, — 

" This is the eve of Christmas, 
No sleep from now till morn, 
The Virgin is in travail, 

At twelve will the child he born ! " 

Behind her stumped a crippled beggar, who croaked 
in a voice rough with frost and aguardiente his deep 
disillusion and distrust of the great : — 

" This is the eve of Christmas, 
But what is that to me ? 
We are ruled by thieves and robbers, 
As it was and will always be." 



BED-LETTER DAYS. 113 

Next comes a shouting band of the youth of 
Spain, strapping boys with bushy locks, crisp and 
black almost to blueness, and gay young girls with 
flexible forms and dark Arab eyes that shine with 
a phosphorescent light in the shadows. They troop 
on with clacking castanets. The challenge of the 
mozos rings out on the frosty air, — 

" This is the eve of Christmas, 

Let us drink and love our fill ! " 

And the saucy antiphon of girlish voices responds, — 

" A man may be "bearded and gray, 
But a woman can fool him still ! " 

The Christmas and New- Year's holidays continue 
for a fortnight, ending with the Epiphany. On the 
eve of the Day of the Kings a curious farce is per- 
formed by bands of the lowest orders of the people, 
which demonstrates the apparently endless naivete 
of their class. In every coterie of water-carriers, 
or mozos de cordel, there will be one found innocent 
enough to believe that the Magi are coming to Ma- 
drid that night, and that a proper respect to their 
rank requires that they must be met at the city 
gate. To perceive the coming of their feet, beauti- 
ful upon the mountains, a ladder is necessary, and 
the poor victim of the comedy is loaded with this 
indispensable "property." He is dragged by his 
gay companions, who never tire of the exquisite 
wit of their jest, from one gate to another, until 



114 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

suspicion supplants faith in the mind of the neo^ 
phyte, and the farce is over. 

In the burgher society of Castile this night is 
devoted to a very different ceremony. Each little 
social circle comes together in a house agreed upon. 
They take mottoes of gilded paper and write on 
each the name of some one of the company. The 
names of the ladies are thrown into one urn, and 
those of the cavaliers into another, and they are 
drawn out by pairs. These couples are thus con- 
demned by fortune to intimacy during the year. The 
gentleman is always to be at the orders of the dame 
and to serve her faithfully in every knightly fashion. 
He has all the duties and none of the privileges of 
a lover, unless it be the joy of those " who stand 
and wait." The relation is very like that which 
so astonished M. de Gramont in his visit to Pied- 
mont, where the cavalier of service never left his 
mistress in public and never approached her in 
private. 

The true Carnival survives in its naive purity 
only in Spain. It has faded in Rome into a romp- 
ing day of clown's play. In Paris it is little more 
than a busier season for dreary and professional 
vice. Elsewhere all over the world the Carnival 
gayeties are confined to the salon. But in Madrid 
the whole city, from grandee to cordwainer, goes 
with childlike earnestness into the enjoyment of 
the hour. The Corso begins in the Prado on the 



RED-LETTER DAYS. 115 

last Sunday before Lent, and lasts four days. From 
noon to night the great drive is filled with a double 
line of carriages two miles long, and between them 
are the landaus of the favored hundreds who have 
the privilege of driving up and down free from the 
law of the road. This right is acquired by the pay- 
ment of ten dollars a day to city charities, and pro- 
duces some fifteen thousand dollars every Carnival. 
In these carriages all the society of Madrid may be 
seen ; and on foot, darting in and out among the 
hoofs of the horses, are the young men of Castile 
in every conceivable variety of absurd and fantastic 
disguise. There are of course pirates and Indians 
and Turks, monks, prophets, and kings, but the 
favorite costumes seem to be the Devil and the 
Englishman. Sometimes the Yankee is attempted, 
with indifferent success. He wears a ribbon-wreathed 
Italian bandit's hat, an embroidered jacket, slashed 
buckskin trousers, and a wide crimson belt, — a dress 
you would at once recognize as universal in Boston. 
Most of the maskers know by name at least the 
occupants of the carriages. There is always room 
for a mask in a coach. They leap in, swarming 
over the back or the sides, and in their shrill mo- 
notonous scream they make the most startling 
revelations of the inmost secrets of your soul. 
There is always something impressive in the talk 
of an unknown voice, but especially is this so in 
Madrid, where every one scorns his own business, 



116 CASTTLIAN DAYS. 

and devotes himself rigorously to his neighbor's. 
These shrieking young monks and devilkins often 
surprise a half-formed thought in the heart of a fair 
Castilian and drag it out into day and derision. No 
one has the right to be offended. Duchesses are 
called Tu ! Isabel ! by chin-dimpled school-boys, and 
the proudest beauties in Spain accept bonbons from 
plebeian hands. It is true, most of the maskers 
are of the better class. Some of the costumes are 
very rich and expensive, of satin and velvet heavy 
with gold. I have seen a distinguished diplomatist 
in the guise of a gigantic canary-bird, hopping brisk- 
ly about in the mud with bedraggled tail-feathers, 
shrieking well-bred sarcasms with his yellow beak. 
The charm of the Madrid Carnival is this, that it 
is respected and believed in. The best and fairest 
pass the day in the Corso, and gallant young gentle- 
men think it worth while to dress elaborately for a 
few hours of harmless and spirituelle intrigue. A 
society that enjoys a holiday so thoroughly has 
something in it better than the blase cynicism of 
more civilized capitals. These young fellows talk 
like the lovers of the old romances. I have never 
heard prettier periods of devotion than from some 
gentle savage, stretched out on the front seat of a 
landau under the peering eyes of his lady, safe in 
his disguise if not self-betrayed, pouring out his 
young soul in passionate praise and prayer ; around 
them the laughter and the cries, the cracking of 



RED-LETTER DAYS. 117 

whips, the roll of wheels, the presence of countless 
thousands, and yet these two young hearts alone 
under the pale winter sky. The rest of the Conti- 
nent has outgrown the true Carnival. It is pleas- 
ant to see this gay relic of simpler times, when 
youth was young. No one here is too " swell " for 
it. You may find a duke in the disguise of a 
chimney-sweep, or a butcher-boy in the dress of a 
Crusader. There .are none so great that their dig- 
nity would suffer by a day's reckless foolery, and 
there are none so poor that they cannot take the 
price of a dinner to buy a mask and cheat their 
misery by mingling for a time with their betters in 
the wild license of the Carnival. 

The winter's gayety dies hard. Ash Wednesday 
is a day of loud merriment and is devoted to a 
popular ceremony called the Burial of the Sardine. 
A vast throng of workingmen carry with great 
pomp a link of sausage to the bank of the Manza- 
nares and inter it there with great solemnity. On 
the following Saturday, after three days of death, 
the Carnival has a resurrection, and the maddest, 
wildest ball of the year takes place at the Opera. 
Then the sackcloth and ashes of Lent come down 
in good earnest and the town mourns over its scarlet 
sins. It used to be very fashionable for the gen- 
teel Christians to repair during this season of morti- 
fication to the Church of San Gines, and scourge 
themselves lustily in its subterranean chambers. 



118 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

A still more striking demonstration was for gentle- 
men in love to lash themselves on the sidewalks 
where passed the ladies of their thoughts. If the 
blood from the scourges sprinkled them as they 
sailed by, it was thought an attention no female 
heart could withstand. But these wholesome cus- 
toms have decayed of late unbelieving years. 

The Lenten piety increases with the lengthening 
days. It reaches its climax on Holy Thursday. 
On this day all Spain goes to church : it is one of 
the obligatory days. The more you go, the better 
for you ; so the good people spend the whole day 
from dawn to dusk roaming from one church to 
another, and investing an Ave and a Pater-Noster 
in each. This fills every street of the city with the 
pious crowd. ISTo carriages are permitted. A silence 
like that of Venice falls on the rattling capital. 
With three hundred thousand people in the street, 
the town seems still. In 1870, a free-thinking cab- 
man dared to drive up the Calle Alcala. He was 
dragged from his box and beaten half to death by 
the chastened mourners, who yelled as they kicked 
and cuffed him, " Que bruto ! He will wake our 
Jesus." 

On Good Friday the gloom deepens. No colors 
are worn that day by the orthodox. The senoras 
appear on the street in funeral garb. I saw a group 
of fast youths come out of the jockey club, 
black from hat to boots, with jet studs and sleeve- 



RED-LETTER DAYS. 119 

buttons. The gayest and prettiest ladies sit within 
the church doors and beg in the holy name of 
charity, and earn large sums for the poor. There 
are hourly services in the churches, passionate ser- 
mons from all the pulpits. The streets are free 
from the painted haunters of the pavement. The 
whole people tastes the luxury of a sentimental 
sorrow. 

Yet in these heavy days it is not the Eedeemer 
whose sufferings and death most nearly touch the 
hearts of the faithful. It is Santisima Maria who 
is worshipped most. It is the Dolorous Mother 
who moves them to tears of tenderness. The pre- 
siding deity of these final days of meditation is Our 
Lady of Solitude. 

But at last the days of mourning are accom- 
plished. The expiation for sin is finished. The 
grave is vanquished, death is swallowed up in vic- 
tory. Man can turn from the grief that is natural 
to the joy that is eternal. From every steeple the 
bells fling out their happy clangor in glad tidings 
of great joy. The streets are flooded once more 
with eager multitudes, gay as in wedding garments. 
Christ has arisen ! The heathen myth of the 
awakening of nature blends the old tradition with 
the new gospel. The vernal breezes sweep the skies 
clean and blue. Birds are pairing in the budding 
trees. The streams leap down from the melting 
snow of the hills. The brown turf takes a tint of 



120 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



verdure. Through the vast frame of things runs a 
quick shudder of teeming power. In the heart of 
man love and will mingle into hope. Hail to the 
new life and the ever-new religion ! Hail to the 
resurrection morning ! 



AN HOUE WITH THE PAINTERS. 121 



AN HOUE WITH THE PAINTEKS. 

As a general thing it is well to distrust a 
Spaniard's superlatives. He will tell you that his 
people are the most amiable in the world, but you 
will do well to carry your revolver into the interior. 
He will say there are no wines worth drinking but 
the Spanish, but you will scarcely forswear Clic- 
quot and Yquem on the mere faith of his asser- 
tion. A distinguished general once gravely as- 
sured me that there was no literature in the world 
at all to be compared with the productions of the 
Castilian mind. All others, he said, were but pale 
imitations of Spanish master-work. Now, though 
you may be shocked at learning such unfavorable 
facts of Shakespeare and Goethe and Hugo, you 
will hardly condemn them to an Auto da fe, on the 
testimony even of a grandee of Spain. 

But when a Spaniard assures you that the picture 
gallery of Madrid is the finest in the world, you 
may believe him without reserve. He probably 
does not know what he is talking about. He may 
never have crossed the Pyrenees. He has no dream 
of the glories of Dresden, or Florence, or the Louvre. 
It is even possible that he has not seen the match- 



P3 



122 -. CASTILIAN DAYS. 

less collection lie is boasting of. He crowns it with, 
a sweeping superlative simply because it is Spanish. 
But the statement is nevertheless true. 

The reason of this is found in that gigantic and 
overshadowing fact which seems to be an explana- 
tion of everything in Spain, — the power and the 
tyranny of the House of Austria. The period of 
the vast increase of Spanish dominion coincided 
with that of the meridian glory of Italian art. 
The conquest of Granada was finished as the divine 
child Eaphael began to meddle with his father's 
brushes and pallets, and before his short life ended 
Charles, Burgess of Ghent, was Emperor and King. 
The dominions he governed and transmitted to his 
son embraced Spain, the Netherlands, Franche- 
Comte, the Milanese, Naples, and Sicily ; that is to 
say, those regions where art in that age and the 
next attained its supreme development. He was 
also lord of the New World, whose inexhaustible 
mines poured into the lap of Europe a constant 
stream of gold. Hence came the riches and the 
leisure necessary to art. 

Charles V., as well as his great contemporary and 
rival, Francis L, was a munificent protector of art. 
He brought from Italy and Antwerp some of the 
most perfect products of their immortal masters. 
He was the friend and patron of Titian, and when, 
weary of the world and its vanities, he retired to 
the lonely monastery of Yuste to spend in devout 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 123 

contemplation the evening of his days, the most 
precious solace of his solitude was that noble can- 
vas of the great Venetian, where Charles and Philip 
are borne, in penitential guise and garb, on lumi- 
nous clouds into the visible glory of the Most High. 
These two great kings made a good use of their 
unbounded opportunities. Spain became illumi- 
nated with the glowing canvases of the incom- 
parable Italians. The opening up of the New 
"World beyond seas, the meteoric career of Euro- 
pean and African conquest in which the Emperor 
had won so much land and glory, had given an 
awakening shock to the intelligent youth of Spain, 
and sent them forth in every avenue of enterprise. 
This jealously patriotic race, which had remained 
locked up by the mountains and the seas for cen- 
turies, started suddenly out, seeking adventures 
over the earth. The mind of Spain seemed sud- 
denly to have brightened and developed like that 
of her great King, who, in his first tourney at Yal- 
ladolid, wrote with proud sluggishness Nondum — 
not yet — on his maiden shield, and a few years 
later in his young maturity adopted the legend of 
arrogant hope and promise, — Plus Ultra. There 
were seen two emigrations of the young men of 
Spain, eastward and westward. The latter went 
for gold and material conquest into the American 
wilds ; and the former, led by the sacred love of 
art, to that land of beauty and wonder, then, now, 



124 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

and always the spiritual shrine of all peoples, — 
Italy. 

A brilliant young army went out from Spain on 
this new crusade of the beautiful. From the plains 
of Castile and the hills of Navarre went, among 
others, Berruguete, Becerra, and the marvellous 
deaf-mute Navarrete. The luxurious city of Valen- 
tia sent Juan de Juanes and Eibalta. Luis de Var- 
gas went out from Seville, and from Cordova the 
scholar, artist, and thinker, Paul of Cespedes. The 
schools of Eome and Venice and Florence were 
thronged with eager pilgrims, speaking an alien 
Latin and filled with a childlike wonder and ap- 
preciation. 

In that stirring age the emigration was not all in 
one direction. Many distinguished foreigners came 
down to Spain, to profit by the new love of art in 
the Peninsula. It was Philip of Burgundy who 
carved, with Berruguete, those miracles of skill and 
patience we admire to-day in the choir of Toledo. 
Peter of Champagne painted at Seville the grand 
altar-piece that so comforted the eyes and the soul 
of Murillo. The wild Greek bedouin, George Theo- 
tocoupouli, built the Mozarabic chapel and filled the 
walls of convents with his weird ghost-faces. Moor, 
or Moro, came from the Low Countries, and the 
Carducci brothers from Italy, to seek their for- 
tunes in Madrid. Torrigiani, after breaking Michael 
Angelo's nose in Florence, fled to Granada, and died 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 125 

in a prison of the Inquisition for smashing the face 
of a Virgin which a grandee of Spain wanted to 
steal from him. 

These immigrations, and the refluent tide of 
Spanish students from Italy, founded the various 
schools of Valentia, Toledo, Seville, and Madrid. 
Madrid soon ahsorbed the school of Toledo, and the 
attraction of Seville was too powerful for Valentia. 
The Andalusian school counts among its early il- 
lustrations Vargas, Eoelas, the Castillos, Herrera, 
Pacheco, and Moya, and among its later glories 
Velazquez, Alonzo Cano, Zurbaran, and Murillo, 
last and greatest of the mighty line. The school 
of Madrid begins with Berruguete and Navarrete, 
the Italians Caxes, Eizi, and others, who are fol- 
lowed by Sanchez Coello, Pantoja, Collantes. Then 
comes the great invader Velazquez, followed by his 
retainers Pareja and Carreno, and absorbs the whole 
life of the school. Claudio Coello makes a good fight 
against the rapid decadence. Luca Giordano comes 
rattling in from Naples with his whitewash-brush, 
painting a mile a minute, and classic art is ended 
in Spain with the brief and conscientious work of 
Raphael Mengs. 

There is therefore little distinction of schools in 
Spain. Murillo, the glory of Seville, studied in 
Madrid, and the mighty Andalusian, Velazquez, per- 
formed his enormous life's work in the capital of 
Castile. 



126 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

It now needs but one word to show now the 
Museum of Madrid became so rich in masterpieces. 
During the long and brilliant reigns of Charles V. 
and Philip II., when art had arrived at its apogee 
in Italy, and was just beginning its splendid career 
in Spain, these powerful monarchs had the lion's 
share of all the best work that was done in the 
world. There was no artist so great but he was 
honored by the commands of these lords of the 
two worlds. They thus formed in their various 
palaces, pleasure-houses, and cloisters a priceless 
collection of pictures produced in the dawn of the 
Spanish and the triumphant hey-day of Italian 
genius. Their frivolous successors lost provinces 
and kingdoms, honor and prestige, but they never 
lost their royal prerogative nor their taste for the 
arts. They consoled themselves for the slings and 
arrows of outrageous fortune by the delights of 
sensual life, and imagined they preserved some dis- 
tant likeness to their great forerunners by encoura- 
ging and protecting Velazquez and Lope de Vega and 
other intellectual giants of that decaying age. So 
while, as the result of a vicious system of kingly 
and spiritual thraldom, the intellect of Spain was 
forced away from its legitimate channels of thought 
and action, under the shadow of the royal preroga- 
tive, which survived the genuine power of the 
older kings, art nourished and bloomed, unsuspected 
and unpersecuted by the coward jealousy of courtier 
and monk. 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 127 

The palace and the convent divided the product 
of those marvellous days. Amid all the poverty of 
the failing state, it was still the king and clergy 
who were best able to appropriate the works of 
genius. This may have contributed to the decay 
of art. The immortal canvases passed into obliv- 
ion in the salons of palaces and the cells of 
monasteries. Had they been scattered over the 
land and seen by the people they might have kept 
alive the spark that kindled their creators. But 
exclusiveness is inevitably followed by barrenness. 
When the great race of Spanish artists ended, these 
matchless works were kept in the safe obscurity of 
palaces and religious establishments. History was 
working in the interests of this Museum. The 
pictures were held by the clenched dead hand of 
the church and the throne. They could not be sold 
or distributed. They made the dark places lumi- 
nous, patiently biding their time. 

It was long enough coming, and it was a des- 
picable hand that brought them into the light. 
Ferdinand VII. thought his palace would look 
fresher if the walls were covered with French 
paper, and so packed all the pictures off to the 
empty building on the Praclo, which his grand- 
father had built for a museum As soon as the 
glorious collection was exposed to the gaze of 
the world, its incontestable merit was at once 
recognized. Especially were the works of Velaz- 



128 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

quez, hitherto almost an unknown name in Europe, 
admired and appreciated. Ferdinand, finding he 
had done a clever thing unawares, began to put on 
airs and poser for a patron of art. The gallery was 
still further immensely enriched on the exclaustra- 
tion of the monasteries, by the hidden treasures of 
the Escorial, and other spoils of mortmain. And 
now, as a collection of masterpieces, it has no equal 
in the world. 

A few figures will prove this. It contains more 
than two thousand pictures already catalogued, — 
all of them worth a place on the walls. Among 
these there are ten by Raphael, forty-three by 
Titian, thirty-four by Tintoret, twenty-five by 
Paul Veronese. Rubens has the enormous contin- 
gent of sixty-four. Of Teniers, whose works are 
sold for fabulous sums for the square inch, this ex- 
traordinary museum possesses no less than sixty 
finished pictures, — the Louvre considers itself 
rich with fourteen. So much for a few of the 
foreigners. Among the Spaniards the three great- 
est names could alone fill a gallery. There are 
sixty-five Velazquez, forty-six Murillos, and fifty- 
eight Riberas. Compare these figures with those 
of any other gallery in existence, and you will at 
once recognize the hopeless superiority of this col- 
lection. It is not only the greatest collection in the 
world, but the greatest that can ever be made until 
this is broken up. 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 129 

. But with all this mass of wealth it is not a com- 
plete, nor, properly speaking, a representative mu- 
seum. You cannot trace upon its walls the slow, 
groping progress of art towards perfection. It con- 
tains few of what the book-lovers call incunabula. 
Spanish art sprang out full-armed from the mature 
brain of Eome. Juan de Juanes came back from 
Italy a great artist. The schools of Spain were 
budded on a full-bearing tree. Charles and Philip 
bought masterpieces, and cared little for the crude 
efforts of the awkward pencils of the necessary men 
who came before Eaphael. There is not a Perugino 
in Madrid. There is nothing Byzantine, no trace 
of Eenaissance; nothing of the patient work of 
the early Flemings, — the art of Flanders comes 
blazing in with the full splendor of Eubens and 
Van Dyck. And even among the masters, the 
representation is most unequal. Among the wilder- 
ness of Titians and Tintorets you find but two 
Domenichinos and two Correggios. Even in Spanish 
art the gallery is far from complete. There is al- 
most nothing of such genuine painters as Zurbaran 
and Herrera. 

But recognizing all this, there is, in this glorious 
temple, enough to fill the least enthusiastic lover 
of art with delight and adoration for weeks and 
months together. If one knew he was to be blind 
in a year, like the young musician in Auerbach's 
exquisite romance, I know of no place in the world 

6* I 



130 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

where he could garner up so precious a store of 
memories for the days of darkness, memories that 
would haunt the soul with so divine a light of con- 
lation, as in that graceful Palace of the Prado. 

It would he a hopeless task to attempt to review 
with any detail the gems of this collection. My 
memory is filled with the countless canvases that 
adorn the ten great halls. If I refer to my note- 
book I am equally discouraged by the number I 
have marked for special notice. The masterpieces 
are simply innumerable. I will say a word of each 
room, and so give up the unequal contest. 

As you enter the Museum from the north, you 
are in a wide sturdy-columned vestibule, hung with 
splashy pictures of Luca Fa Presto. To your right 
is the room devoted to the Spanish school ; to the 
left, the Italian. In front is the grand gallery where 
the greatest works of both schools are collected. In 
the Spanish saloon there is an indefinable air of 
severity and gloom. It is less perfectly lighted 
than some others, and there is something forbidding 
in the general tone of the room. There are prim 
portraits of queens and princes, monks in contem- 
plation, and holy people in antres vast and deserts 
idle. Most visitors come in from a sense of duty, 
look hurriedly about, and go out with a conscience 
at ease ; in fact, there is a dim suggestion of the 
fagot and the rack about many of the Spanish 
masters. At one end of this gallery the Prome- 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 131 

theus of Bibera agonizes chained to his rock. His 
gigantic limbs are flung about in the fury of im- 
mortal pain. A vulture, almost lost in the black- 
ness of the shadows, is tugging at his vitals. His 
brow is convulsed with the pride and anguish of a 
demigod. It is a picture of horrible power. Op- 
posite hangs one of the few Zurbarans of the gal- 
lery, — also a gloomy and terrible work. A monk 
kneels in shadows which, by the masterly chiaro- 
scuro of this ascetic artist, are made to look darker 
than blackness. Before him in a luminous nimbus 
that burns its way through the dark, is the image 
of the crucified Saviour, head downwards. So re- 
markable is the vigor of the drawing and the power 
of light in this picture that you can imagine you 
see the resplendent crucifix suddenly thrust into 
the shadow by the strong hands of invisible spirits, 
and swayed for a moment only before the dazzled 
eyes of the ecstatic solitary. 

But after you have made friends with this room 
it will put off its forbidding aspect, and you will 
find it hath a stern look but a gentle heart. It 
has two lovely little landscapes by Murillo, show- 
ing how universal was that wholesome genius. Also 
one of the largest landscapes of Velazquez, which, 
when you stand near it, seems a confused mass of 
brown daubs, but stepping back a few yards becomes 
a most perfect view of the entrance to a royal park. 
The wide gate swings on its pivot before your eyes. 



132 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

A court cortege moves in, — the long, dark alley 
stretches off for miles directly in front, without any 
trick of lines or curves ; the artist has painted the 
shaded air. To the left a patch of still water re- 
flects the dark wood, and above there is a distant 
and tranquil sky. Had Velazquez not done such 
vastly greater things, his few landscapes would alone 
have won him fame enough. He has in this room 
a large number of royal portraits, — one especially 
worth attention, of Philip III. The scene is by the 
shore, — a cool foreground of sandy beach, — a 
blue-gray stretch of rippled water, and beyond, a 
low promontory between the curling waves and the 
cirrus clouds. The king mounts a magnificent 
gray horse, with a mane and tail like the broken 
rush of a cascade. The keeping is wonderful ; a 
fresh sea breeze blows out of the canvas. A bril- 
liant bit of color is thrown into the red, gold-fringed 
scarf of the horseman, fluttering backward over his 
shoulder. Yet the face of the king is, as it should 
be, the principal point of the picture, — the small- 
eyed, heavy-mouthed, red-lipped, fair, self-satisfied 
face of these Austrian despots. It is a handsomer 
face than most of Velazquez, as it was probably 
painted from memory and lenient tradition. For 
Philip III. was gathered to his fathers in the Escorial 
before Velazquez came up from Andalusia to seek 
his fortune at the court. The first work he did in 
Madrid was to paint the portrait of the king, which 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 133 

so pleased liis Majesty that he had it repeated ad 
nauseam. You see him served up in every form in 
this gallery, — on foot, on horseback, in full armor, 
in a shooting jacket, at picnics, and actually on his 
knees at his prayers ! We wonder if Velazquez 
ever grew tired of that vacant face with its con- 
tented smirk, or if in that loyal age the smile of 
royalty was not always the sunshine of the court ? 

There is a most instructive study of faces in the 
portraits of the Austrian line. First comes Charles 
V., the First of Spain, painted by Titian at Augs- 
burg, on horseback, in the armor he wore at Muhl- 
berg, his long lance in rest, his visor up over the 
eager, powerful face, — the eye and beak of an 
eagle, the jaw of a bull-dog, the face of a born 
ruler, a man of prey. And yet in the converging 
lines about the eyes, in the premature gray hair, 
in the nervous, irritable lips, you can see the prom- 
ise of early decay, of an age that will be the spoil 
of superstition and bigotry. It is the face of a man 
who could make himself emperor and hermit. In 
his son, Philip II., the soldier dies out and the bigot 
is intensified. In the fine portrait by Pantoja, of 
Philip in his age, there is scarcely any trace of the 
fresh, fair youth that Titian painted as Adonis. It 
is the face of a living corpse ; of a ghastly pallor, 
heightened by the dull black of his mourning suit, 
where all passion and feeling has died out of the livid 
lips and the icy eyes. Beside him hangs the portrait 



134 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

of his rickety, feebly passionate son, the unfortunate 
Don Carlos. The forehead of the young Prince is 
narrow and ill-formed ; the Austrian chin is exag- 
gerated one degree more ; he looks a picture of fit- 
ful impulse. His brother, Philip III., we have just 
seen, fair and inane, — a monster of cruelty, who 
burned Jews and banished Moors, not from malice, 
but purely from vacuity of spirit ; his head broadens 
like a pine-apple from the blond crest to the plump 
jowls. Every one knows the head of Philip IV., 

— he was fortunate in being the friend of Velaz- 
quez. The high, narrow brow, long, weak face, the 
yellow curled mustache, the thick red lips, and the 
ever lengthening Hapsburg chin. But the line of 
Austria ends with the utmost limit of caricature in 
the face of Charles the Bewitched ! Carreno has 
given us an admirable portrait of this unfortunate, 

— the forehead caved in like the hat of a drunkard, 
the red-lidded eyes staring vacantly, a long, thin 
nose absurd as a Carnival disguise, an enormous 
mouth which he could not shut, the under-jaw pro- 
jected so prodigiously, — a face incapable of any 
emotion but fear. And yet in gazing at this idiotic 
mask you are reminded of another face you have 
somewhere seen, and are startled to remember it is 
the resolute face of the warrior and statesman, the 
king of men, the Kaiser Karl. Yes, this pitiable 
being was the descendant of the great Emperor, and 
for that sufficient reason, although he was an im- 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 135 

potent and shivering idiot, although he could not 
sleep without a friar in his bed to keep the devils 
away, for thirty-five years this scarecrow T ruled over 
Spain, and dying made a will whose accomplishment 
bathed the Peninsula in blood. It must be con- 
fessed this institution of monarchy is a luxury that 
must be paid for. 

We did not intend to talk of politics in this room, 
but that line of royal effigies was too tempting. 
Before we go, let us look at a beautiful Magdalen 
in penitence, by an unknown artist of the school of 
Murillo. She stands near the entrance of her cave, 
in a listening attitude. The bright out-of-door light 
falls on her bare shoulder and gives the faintest 
touch of gold to her dishevelled brown hair. She 
casts her eyes upward, the large melting eyes of 
Andalusia ; a chastened sorrow, through which a 
trembling hope is shining, softens the somewhat 
worldly beauty of her exquisite and sensitive face. 
Through the mouth of the cave we catch a glimpse 
of sunny mountain solitude, and in the rosy air 
that always travels with Spanish angels a band of 
celestial serenaders is playing. It is a charming 
composition, without any depth of sentiment or 
especial mastery of treatment, but evidently painted 
by a clever artist in his youth, and this Magdalen 
is the portrait of the lady of his dreams. None of 
Murillo's pupils but Tobar could have painted it, 
and the manner is precisely the same as that of his 
Divina Pastora. 



136 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



Across the hall is the gallery consecrated to Ital 
ian artists. There are not many pictures of the first 
rank here. They have been reserved for the great 
central gallery, where we are going. But while 
here, we must notice especially two glorious works 
of Tintoret, — the same subject differently treated, 
— the Death of Holofernes. Both are placed higher 
than they should be, considering their incontestable 
merit. A full light is needed to do justice to that 
magnificence of color which is the pride of Venice. 
There are two remarkable pictures of Giordano, — 
one in the Boman style, which would not be un- 
worthy of the great Sanzio himself, a Holy Family, 
drawn and colored with that scrupulous correctness 
which seems so impossible in the ordinary products 
of this Protean genius ; and just opposite, an apo- 
theosis of Bubens, surrounded by his usual " prop- 
erties" of fat angels and genii, which could be 
readily sold anywhere as a specimen of the estimate 
which the unabashed Fleming placed upon himself. 
It is marvellous that any man should so master the 
habit and the thought of two artists so widely apart 
as Baphael and Bubens, as to produce just such 
pictures as they would have painted upon the same 
themes. The halls and dark corridors of the Mu- 
seum are filled with Giordano's canvases. In less 
than ten years' residence in Spain he covered the 
walls of dozens of churches and palaces with his 
fatally facile work. There are more than three hun- 






AN HOUK WITH THE PAINTERS. 137 

died pictures recorded as executed by him in that 
time. They are far from being without merit. There 
is a singular slap-dash vigor about his drawing. His 
coloring, except when he is imitating some earlier 
master, is usually thin and poor. It is difficult to 
repress an emotion of regret in looking at his la- 
borious yet useless life. With great talents, with 
indefatigable industry, he deluged Europe with 
paintings that no one cares for, and passed into 
history simply as Luke Work-Fast. 

It is not by mere activity that great things are done 
in art. In the great gallery we now enter we see the 
deathless work of the men who wrought in faith. 
This is the grandest room in Christendom. It is about 
three hundred and fifty feet long and thirty-five 
broad and high. It is beautifully lighted from above. 
Its great length is broken here and there by vases 
and statues, so placed between doors as nowhere to 
embarrass the view. The northern half of the gallery 
is Spanish, and the southern half Italian. Half-way 
down, a door to the left opens into an oval chamber, 
devoted to an eclectic set of masterpieces of every 
school and age. The gallery ends in a circular room 
of French and German pictures, on either side of which 
there are two great halls of Dutch and Flemish. On 
the ground floor there are some hundreds more 
Flemish and a hall of sculpture. 
\ The first pictures you see to your left are by the 
early masters of Spain, — Morales, called in Spain 



138 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

the Divine, whose works are now extremely rare, 
the Museum possessing only three or four, long, 
fleshless faces and stiff figures of Christs and 
Marys, — and Juan de Juanes, the founder of the 
Valentian school, who brought back from Italy the 
lessons of Raphael's studio, that firmness of design 
and brilliancy of color, and whose genuine merit 
has survived all vicissitudes of changing taste. He 
has here a superb Last Supper and a spirited series 
of pictures illustrating the martyrdom of Stephen. 
There is perhaps a little too much elaboration of 
detail, even for the Romans. Stephen's robes are 
unnecessarily new, and the ground where he is 
stoned is profusely covered with convenient round 
missiles the size of biscuits, so exactly suited to the 
purpose that it looks as if Providence sided with 
the persecutors. But what a wonderful variety and 
truth in the faces and the attitudes of the groups ! 
What mastery of drawing, and what honest integrity 
of color after all these ages ! It is reported of 
Juanes that he always confessed and prayed before 
venturing to take up his pencils to touch the fea- 
tures of the saints and Saviours that shine on 
his canvas. His conscientious fervor has its re- 
ward. 

Across the room are the Murillos. Hung to- 
gether are two pictures, not of large limensions. 
but of exquisite perfection, which will serve as fair 
illustrations of the work of his youth and his age ; 



AN HOUE WITH THE PAINTERS. 139 

the frio and the vaporoso manner. In the former 
manner is this charming picture of Rebecca at the 
Well ; a graceful composition, correct and some- 
what severe drawing, the greatest sharpness and 
clearness of outline. In the " Martyrdom of St. 
Andrew" the drawing and the composition is no 
less absolutely perfect, but there hangs over the 
whole picture a luminous haze of strangeness and 
mystery. A light that never was on sea or shore 
bathes the distant hills and battlements, touches 
the spears of the legionaries, and shines in full 
glory on the ecstatic face of the aged saint. It 
does not seem a part of the scene. You see the 
picture through it. A step further on there is a 
Holy Family, which seems to me the ultimate effort 
of the early manner. A Jewish carpenter holds his 
fair-haired child between his knees. The urchin 
holds up a bird to attract the attention of a little 
white dog on the floor. The mother, a dark-haired 
peasant woman, looks on the scene with quiet 
amusement. The picture is absolutely perfect in 
detail. It seems to be the consigne among critics to 
say it lacks " style." They say it is a family scene 
in Judaea, voila tout Of course, and it is that very 
truth and nature that makes this picture so fasci- 
nating. The Word was made flesh, and not a phos- 
phorescent apparition ; and Murillo knew what he 
was about when he painted this view of the inte- 
rior of St. Joseph's shop. What absurd presump- 



140 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

tion to accuse this great thinker of a deficiency of 
ideality, in face of these two glorious Marys of 
the Conception that fill the room with light and 
majesty ! They hang side by side, so alike and yet 
so distinct in character. One is a woman in knowl- 
edge and a goddess of purity ; the other, absolute 
innocence, startled by the stupendous revelation 
and exalted by the vaguely comprehended glory of 
the future. It is before this picture that the visitor 
always lingers longest. The face is the purest ex- 
pression of girlish loveliness possible to art. The 
Virgin floats upborne by rosy clouds, flocks of pink 
cherubs flutter at her feet waving palm-branches. 
The golden air is thick with suggestions of dim 
celestial faces, but nothing mars the imposing soli- 
tude of the Queen of Heaven, shrined alone, throned 
in the luminous azure. Surely no man ever under- 
stood or interpreted like this grand Andalusian the 
power that the worship of woman exerts on the 
religions of the world. All the passionate love that 
has been poured out in all the ages at the feet of 
Ashtaroth and Artemis and Aphrodite and Freya 
found visible form and color at last on that im- 
mortal canvas where, with his fervor of religion 
and the full strength of his virile devotion to beauty, 
he created, for the adoration of those who should 
follow him, this type of the perfect Feminine, — 

" Thee ! -standing loveliest in the open heaven ! 
Ave Maria ! only heaven and Thee ! " 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 141 

There are some dozens more of Murillo here al- 
most equally remarkable, but I cannot stop to make 
an unmeaning catalogue of them. There is a charm- 
ing Gypsy Fortune-teller, whose wheedling voice and 
smile were caught and fixed in some happy moment 
in Seville ; an Adoration of the Shepherds, wonder- 
ful in its happy combination of rigid truth with the 
warmest glow of poetry ; two Annunciations, rich 
with the radiance that streams through the rent 
veil of the innermost heaven, — lights painted bold- 
ly upon lights, the White Dove sailing out of the 
dazzling background of celestial effulgence, — a 
miracle and mystery of theology repeated by a 
miracle and mystery of art. 

Even when you have exhausted the Murillos of 
the Museum you have not reached his highest 
achievements in color and design. You will find 
these in the Academy of San Fernando, — the 
Dream of the Eoman Gentleman, and the Founding 
of the Church of St. Mary the Greater; and the 
powerful composition of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 
in her hospital work. In the first, a noble Eoman 
and his wife have suddenly fallen asleep in their 
chairs in an elegant apartment. Their slumber is 
painted with curious felicity, — you lower your 
voice for fear of waking them. On the left of the 
picture is their dream : the Virgin comes in a halo 
of golden clouds and designates the spot where her 
church is to be built. In the next picture the 



142 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

happy couple kneel before the Pope and expose their 
high commission, and outside a brilliant procession 
moves to the ceremony of the laying of the corner- 
stone. The St. Elizabeth is a triumph of genius 
over a most terribly repulsive subject. The wounds 
and sores of the beggars are painted with unshrink- 
ing fidelity, but every vulgar detail is redeemed by 
the beauty and majesty of the whole. I think in 
these pictures of Murillo the last word of Spanish 
art was reached. There was no further progress 
possible in life, even for him. " Other heights in 
other lives, God willing." 

Eeturning to the Museum and to Velazquez, we 
find ourselves in front of his greatest historical 
work, the Surrender of Breda. This is probably the 
most utterly unaffected historical painting in exist- 
ence. There is positively no stage business about 
it. On the right is the Spanish staff, on the left 
the deputation of the vanquished Flemings. In the 
centre the great Spinola accepts the keys of the city 
from the Governor ; his attitude and face are full of 
dignity softened by generous and affable grace. He 
lays his hand upon the shoulder of the Flemish 
general, and you can see he is paying him some 
chivalrous compliment on the gallant fight he has 
lost. If your eyes wander through the open space 
between the two escorts, you see a wonderful wide- 
spread landscape in the Netherlands, which would 
form a fine picture if the figures all were gone. 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 143 

Opposite this great work is another which artists 
consider greater, — Las Meninas. When Luca Gior- 
dano came from Italy he inquired for this picture, 
and said on seeing it, " Tins is the theology of paint- 
ing." If our theology were what it should be, and 
cannot be, absolute and unquestionable truth, Luca 
the Quick-worker would have been right. Velaz- 
quez was painting the portrait of a stupid little In- 
fanta when the idea came to him of perpetuating 
the scene just as it was. We know how we have 
wished to be sure of the exact accessories of past 
events. The modern rage for theatrical local color 
is an illustration of this desire. The great artist, 
who must have honored his art, determined to give 
to future ages an exact picture of one instant of his 
glorious life. It is not too much to say he has done 
this. He stands before his easel, his pencils in his 
hand. The little princess is stiffly posing in the 
centre. Her little maids are grouped about her. 
Two hideous dwarfs on the right are teasing a noble 
dog who is too drowsy and magnanimous to growl. 
In the background at the end of a long gallery a 
gentleman is opening a door to the garden. The 
presence of royalty is indicated by the reflection of 
the faces of the king and queen in a small mirror, 
where you would expect to see your own. The 
longer you look upon this marvellous painting, the 
less possible does it seem that it is merely the 
placing of color on canvas which causes this perfect 



144 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

illusion. It does not seem possible that you are 
looking at a plane surface. There is a stratum of 
air before, behind, and beside these figures. You 
could walk on that floor and see how the artist is 
getting on with the portrait. There is space and 
light in this picture, as in any room. Every object 
is detached, as in the common miracle of the stereo- 
scope. If art consist in making a fleeting moment 
immortal, if the True is a higher ideal than the 
Beautiful, then it will be hard to find a greater 
painting than this. It is utterly without beauty ; 
its tone is a cold olive green-gray ; there is not one 
redeeming grace or charm about it except the noble 
figure of Velazquez himself, — yet in its austere 
fidelity to truth it stands incomparable in the world. 
It gained Velazquez his greatest triumph. You see 
on his breast a sprawling red cross, painted evident- 
ly by an unskilful hand. This was the gracious 
answer made by Philip IV. when the artist asked 
him if anything was wanting to the picture. This 
decoration, daubed by the royal hand, was the ac- 
colade of the knighthood of Santiago, — an honor 
beyond the dreams of an artist of that day. It may 
be considered the highest compliment ever paid to 
a painter, except the one paid by Courbet to him- 
self, when he refused to be decorated by the man 
of December. 

Among Velazquez's most admirable studies of life 
is his picture of the Borrachos. A group of rustic 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 145 

roysterers are admitting a neophyte into the drunken 
confrerie. He kneels to receive a crown of ivy from 
the hands of the king of the revel. A group of 
older tipplers are filling their cups, or eying their 
brimming glasses, with tipsy, mock-serious glances. 
There has never been a chapter written which so 
clearly shows the drunkard's nature as this vulgar 
anacreontic. A thousand men have painted drunken 
frolics, but never one with such distinct spiritual 
insight as this. To me the finest product of Jor- 
daens' genius is his Bohnen Konig in the Belve- 
dere, but there you see only the incidents of the 
mad revel ; every one is shouting or singing or weep- 
ing with maudlin glee or tears. But in this scene 
of the Borrachos there is nothing scenic or forced. 
These topers have come together to drink, for the 
love of the wine, — the fun is secondary. This 
wonderful reserve of Velazquez is clearly seen in 
his conception of the king of the rouse. He is a 
young man, with a heavy, dull, somewhat serious 
face, fat rather than bloated, rather pale than flushed. 
He is naked to the waist to show the plump white 
arms and shoulders and the satiny skin of the 
voluptuary ; one of those men whose head and 
whose stomachs are too loyal ever to give them 
Katzenjammer or remorse. The others are of the 
commoner type of haunters of wine-shops, — with 
red eyes and coarse hides and grizzled matted hair, 
— but every man of them inexorably true, and a 
predestined sot. 



146 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

"We must break away from Velazquez, passing by 
his marvellous portraits of kings and dwarfs, saints 
and poodles, — among whom there is a dwarf of two 
centuries ago, who is too like Tom Thumb to serve 
for his twin brother, — and a portrait of iEsop, which 
is a flash of intuition, an epitome of all the fables. 
Before leaving the Spaniards we must look at the 
most pleasing of all Eibera's works, — the Ladder- 
Dream of Jacob. The patriarch lies stretched on 
the open plain in the deep sleep of the weary. To 
the right in a broad shaft of cloudy gold the angels 
are ascending and descending. The picture is re- 
markable for its mingling the merits of Eibera's 
first and second manner. It is a Caravaggio in its 
strength and breadth of light and shade, and a Cor- 
reggio in its delicacy of sentiment and refined beauty 
of coloring. He was not often so fortunate in his 
Parmese efforts. They are usually marked by a 
timidity and an attempt at prettiness inconceivable 
in the haughty and impulsive master of the Nea- 
politan school. 

Of the three great Spaniards, Eibera is the least 
sympathetic. He often displays a tumultuous power 
and energy to which his calmer rivals are strangers. 
But you miss in him that steady devotion to truth 
which distinguishes Velazquez, and that spiritual 
lift which ennobles Murillo. The difference, I con- 
ceive, lies in the moral character of the three. Ei- 
bera was a great artist, and the others were noble 



; 

ts 

70 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 147 

men. Bibera passed a youth of struggle and hun- 
ger and toil among the artists of Kome, — a stranger 
and penniless in the magnificent city, — picking up 
crusts in the street and sketching on quiet curb- 
stones, with no friend, and no name but that of 
Spagnoletto, — the little Spaniard. Suddenly ris- 
ing to fame, he broke loose from his Eoman asso- 
ciations and fled to Naples, where he soon became the 
wealthiest and the most arrogant artist of his time. 
He held continually at his orders a faction of hravi 
who drove from Naples, with threats and insults and 
violence, every artist of eminence who dared visit 
the city. Carracci and Guiclo only saved their lives 
by flight, and the blameless and gifted Domenichino, 
it is said, was foully murdered by his order. It is 
not to such a heart as this that is given the ineffable 
raptures of Murillo or the positive revelations of 
Velazquez. These great souls were above cruelty or 
jealousy. Velazquez never knew the storms of 
adversity. Safely anchored in the royal favor, he 
passed his uneventful life in the calm of his beloved 
work. But his hand and home were always open 
to the struggling artists of Spain. He was the 
benefactor of Alonzo Cano ; and when Murillo came 
up to Madrid, weary and footsore with his long 
tramp from Andalusia, sustained by an innate con- 
sciousness of power, all on fire with a picture of 
Van Dyck he had seen in Seville, the rich and 
honored painter of the court received with generous 



148 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

kindness the shabby young wanderer, clothed him, 
and taught him, and watched with noble delight the 
first flights of the young eagle whose strong wing 
was so soon to cleave the empyrean. And when 
Murillo went back to Seville he paid his debt by 
doing as much for others. These magnanimous 
hearts were fit company for the saints they drew. 

We have lingered so long with the native artists 
we shall have little to say of the rest. There are 
ten fine Eaphaels, but it is needless to speak of 
them. They have been endlessly reproduced. Ea- 
phael is known and judged by the world. After 
some centuries of discussion the scorners and the 
critics are dumb. All men have learned the habit of 
Albani, who, in a frivolous and unappreciative age, 
always uncovered his head at the name of Eaphael 
Sanzio. We look at his precious work with a 
mingled feeling of gratitude for what we have, and 
of rebellious wonder that lives like his and Shel- 
ley's should be extinguished in their glorious dawn, 
while kings and country gentlemen live a hundred 
years. What boundless possibilities of bright 
achievement these two divine youths owed us in 
the forty years more they should have lived ! Ea- 
phael's greatest pictures in Madrid are the Spasimo 
di Sicilia, and the Holy Family, called La Perla. 
The former has a singular history. It was painted 
for a convent in Palermo, shipwrecked on the way, 
and thrown ashore on the gulf of Genoa. It was 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 149 

again sent to Sicily, brought to Spain by the Vice- 
roy of Naples, stolen by Napoleon, and in Paris was 
subjected to a brilliantly successful operation for 
transferring the layer of paint from the worm-eaten 
wood to canvas. It came back to Spain with other 
stolen goods from the Louvre. La Perla was 
bought by Philip IV. at the sale of Charles I.'s ef- 
fects after his decapitation. Philip was fond of 
Charles, but could not resist the temptation to 
profit by his death. This picture was the richest 
of the booty. It is, of all the faces of the Virgin 
extant, the most perfectly beautiful and one of the 
least spiritual. 

There is another fine Madonna, commonly called 
La Virgen del Pez, from a fish which young Tobit 
holds in his hand. It is rather tawny in color, as 
if it had been painted on a pine board and the wood 
had asserted itself from below. It is a charming 
picture, with all the great Roman's inevitable per- 
fection of design ; but it is incomprehensible that 
critics, Mr. Viardot among them, should call it the 
first in rank of Raphael's Virgins in Glory. There 
are none which can dispute that title with Our Lady 
of San Sisto, unearthly and supernatural in beauty 
and majesty. 

The school of Florence is represented by a charm- 
ing Mona Lisa of Leonardo da Vinci, almost identi- 
cal with that of the Louvre ; and six admirable 
pictures of Andrea del Sarto. But the one which 



150 CASTILIAH DAYS. 

most attracts and holds all those who regard the 
Faultless Painter with sympathy, and who admiriDg 
his genius regret his errors, is a portrait of his wife 
Lucrezia Fede, whose name, a French writer has 
said, is a double epigram. It was this capricious 
and wilful beauty who made poor Andrea break his 
word and embezzle the money King Francis had 
given him to spend for works of art. Yet this dan- 
gerous face is his best excuse, — the face of a man- 
snarer, subtle and passionate and cruel in its 
blind selfishness, and yet so beautiful that any man 
might yield to it against the cry of his own warn- 
ing conscience. Browning must have seen it before 
he wrote, in his pathetic poem, — 

" Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold, 
You beautiful Lucrezia, that are mine ! " 

Nowhere, away from the Adriatic, is the Venetian 
school so richly represented as in Madrid. Charles 
and Philip were the most munificent friends and 
patrons of Titian, and the Eoyal Museum counts 
among its treasures in consequence the enormous 
number of forty- three pictures by the wonderful 
centenarian. Among these are two upon which he 
set great value, — a Last Supper, which has unfor- 
tunately mouldered to ruin in the humid refectory of 
the Escorial, equal in merit and destiny with that 
of Leonardo ; and the Gloria, or apotheosis of the 
Imperial family, which, after the death of Charles, 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 151 

was brought from Yuste to the Escorial, and thence 
came to swell the treasures of the Museum. It is 
a grand and masterly work. The vigorous genius 
of Titian has grappled with the essential difficulties 
of a subject that trembles on the balance of ridicu- 
lous and sublime, and has come out triumphant. 
The Father and the Son sit on high. The Operating 
Spirit hovers above them. The Virgin in robes of 
azure stands in the blaze of the Presence. The 
celestial army is ranged around. Below, a little 
lower than the angels, are Charles and Philip with 
their wives, on their knees, with white cowls and 
clasped hands, — Charles in his premature age, with 
worn face and grizzled beard; and Philip in his 
youth of unwholesome fairness, with red lips and 
pink eyelids, such as Titian painted him in the 
Adonis. The foreground is filled with prophets and 
saints of the first dignity, and a kneeling woman, 
whose face is not visible, but whose attitude and 
drapery are drawn with the sinuous and undulating 
grace of that hand which could not fail. Every 
figure is turned to the enthroned Deity, touched 
with ineffable light. The artist has painted heaven, 
and is not absurd. In that age of substantial faith 
such achievements were possible. 

There are two Venuses by Titian very like that 
of Dresden, but the heads have not the same dig- 
nity ; and a Danse which is a replica of the Vienna 
one. His Salome bearing the Head of John the 



152 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Baptist is one of the finest impersonations of the 
pride of life conceivable. So unapproachable are 
the soft lights and tones on the perfect arms and 
shoulders of the full-bodied maiden, that Tintoret 
one day exclaimed in despair before it, " That fellow 
paints with ground flesh." 

This gallery possesses one of the last works of 
Titian, — the Battle of Lepanto, which was fought 
when the artist was ninety-four years of age. It 
is a courtly allegory, — King Philip holds his little 
son in his arms, a courier angel brings the news of 
victory, and to the infant a palm-branch and the 
scroll Major a tibi. Outside you see the smoke and 
flash of a naval battle, and a malignant and tur- 
baned Turk lies bound on the floor. It would seem 
incredible that this enormous canvas should have 
been executed at such an age, did we not know that 
when the pest cut the mighty master off in his 
hundredth year he was busily at work upon a De- 
scent from the Cross, which Palma the Elder fin- 
ished on his knees and dedicated to God : Quod Ti- 
tianus inchoatum reliquit Palma reveventer aosolvit 
Deoque dicavit opus. 

The vast representation of Titian rather injures 
Veronese and Tintoret. Opposite the Gloria of 
Yuste hangs the sketch of that stupendous Paradise 
of Tintoret, which we see in the Palace of the Doges, 
— the biggest picture ever painted by mortal, 
thirty feet high and seventy-four long. The sketch 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 153 

was secured by Velazquez in his tour through Italy. 
The most charming picture of Veronese is a Venus 
and Adonis, which is finer than that of Titian, — a 
classic and most exquisite idyl of love and sleep, 
cool shadow and golden-sifted sunshine. His most 
considerable work in the gallery is a Christ teach- 
ing the Doctors, magnificent in arrangement, severe- 
ly correct in drawing, and of a most vivid and 
dramatic interest. 

We pass through a circular vaulted chamber to 
reach the Flemish rooms. There is a choice though 
scanty collection of the German and French schools. 
Albert Durer has an Adam and Eve, and a priceless 
portrait of himself as perfectly preserved as if it 
were painted yesterday. He wears a curious and 
picturesque costume, — striped black-and-white, — a 
graceful tasselled cap of the same. The picture is 
sufficiently like the statue at Nuremberg ; a long 
South-German face, blue-eyed and thin, fair-whis- 
kered, with that expression of quiet confidence you 
would expect in the man who said one day, with 
admirable candor, when people were praising a pic- 
ture of his, " It could not be better done." In this 
circular room are four great Claudes, two of which, 
Sunrise and Sunset, otherwise called the Em- 
barcation of Sta. Paula, and Tobit and the Angel, 
are in his best and richest manner. It is incon- 
ceivable to us, who graduate men by a high-school 
standard, that these refined and most elegant works 



154 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

could have been produced by a clown who could 
neither read nor write. 

There remain the pictures of the Dutch and the 
Flemings. It is due to the causes we have men- 
tioned in the beginning that neither in Antwerp nor 
Dresden nor Paris is there such wealth and pro- 
fusion of the Netherlands art as in this mountain- 
guarded corner of Western Europe. I shall have 
but a word to say of these three vast rooms, for 
Rubens and Van Dyck and Teniers are known to 
every one. The first has here a representation so 
complete that if Europe were sunk by a cataclysm 
from the Baltic to the Pyrenees every essential 
characteristic of the great Fleming could still be 
studied in this gallery. With the exception of his 
Descent from the Cross in the Cathedral at An- 
twerp, painted in a moment of full inspiration that 
never comes twice in a life, everything he has done 
elsewhere may be matched in Madrid. His largest 
picture here is an Adoration of the Kings, an over- 
powering exhibition of wasteful luxuriance of color 
and fougue of composition. To the left the Virgin 
stands leaning with queenly majesty over the efful- 
gent Child. From this point the light flashes out 
over the kneeling magi, the gorgeously robed at- 
tendants, the prodigality of velvet and jewels and 
gold, to fade into the lovely clear-obscure of a starry 
night peopled with dim camels and cattle. On the 
extreme right is a most graceful and gallant por- 



AN HOUR WITH THE TAINTERS. 155 

trait of the artist on horseback. We have another 
fine autotype in the Garden of Love, — a group of 
lords and ladies in a delicious pleasance where the 
greatest seigneur is Peter Paul Eubens and the 
finest lady is Helen Forman. These true artists 
had to paint for money so many ignoble faces that 
they could not be blamed for taking their revenge 
in painting sometimes their own noble heads. Van 
Dyck never drew a profile so faultless in manly 
beauty as his own which we see on the same can- 
vas with that of his friend the Earl of Bristol. 
Look at the two faces side by side, and say whether 
God or the king can make the best nobleman. 

Among those mythological subjects in which 
Eubens delighted, the best here are his Perseus 
and Andromeda, where the young hero comes 
gloriously in a brand-new suit of Milanese armor, 
while the lovely princess, in a costume that never 
grows old-fashioned, consisting of sunshine and 
golden hair, awaits him and deliverance in beauti- 
ful resignation; a Judgment of Paris, the Three 
Graces, — both prodigies of his strawberries-and- 
cream color; and a curious suckling of Hercules, 
which is the prototype or adumbration of the 
ecstatic vision of St. Bernard. He has also a copy 
of Titian's Adam and Eve, in an out-of-the-way 
place down stairs, which should be hung beside the 
original, to show the difference of handling of the 
two master colorists. 



156 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Especially happy is this Museum in its Van 
Dycks. Besides those incomparable portraits of 
Lady Oxford, of Liberti the Organist of Antwerp, 
and others better than the best of any other man, 
there are a few large and elaborate compositions 
such as I have never seen elsewhere. The princi- 
pal one is the Capture of Christ by night in the 
Garden of Gethsemane, which has all the strength 
of Eubens, with a more refined study of attitudes 
and a greater delicacy of tone and touch. Another 
is the Crowning with Thorns, — although of less 
dimensions, of profound significance in expression, 
and a flowing and marrowy softness of execution. 
You cannot survey the work of Van Dyck in this 
collection, so full of deep suggestion, showing an 
intellect so vivid and so refined, a mastery of pro- 
cesses so thorough and so intelligent, without the 
old wonder of what he would have done in that 
ripe age when Titian and Murillo and Shakespeare 
wrought their best and fullest, and the old regret for 
the dead, — as Edgar Poe sings, the doubly dead in 
that they died so young. We are tempted to lift the 
veil that hides the unknown, at least with the fur- 
tive hand of conjecture ; to imagine a field of un- 
quenched activity where the early dead, free from 
the clogs and trammels of the lower world, may 
follow out the impulses of their diviner nature, — 
where Andrea has no wife, and Eaphael and Van 
Dyck no disease, — where Keats and Shelley have all 



AN HOUR WITH THE PAINTERS. 157 

eternity for their lofty rhyme, — where Ellsworth and 
Koerner and the Lowell boys can turn their alert 
and athletic intelligence to something better than 
war. 



158 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



CASTLE IN THE AIE. 

I have sometimes thought that a symptom of 
the decay of true kinghood in modern times is the 
love of monarchs for solitude. In the early days 
when monarchy was a real power to answer a real 
want, the king had no need to hide himself. He 
was the strongest, the most knowing, the most cun- 
ning. He moved among men their acknowledged 
chief. He guided and controlled them. He never 
lost his dignity by daily use. He could steal 
a horse like Diomede, he could mend his own 
breeches like Dagobert, and never tarnish the 
lustre of the crown by it. But in later times the 
throne has become an anachronism. The wearer 
of a crown has done nothing to gain it but give 
himself the trouble to be born. He has no claim 
to the reverence or respect of men. Yet he insists 
upon it, and receives some show of it. His life is 
mainly passed in keeping up this battle for a lost 
dignity and worship. He is given up to shams and 
ceremonies. 

To* a life like this there is something embarrassing 
in the movement and activity of a great city. The 
king cannot join in it without a loss of prestige. 



A CASTLE IN THE AIR. 159 

Being outside of it, lie is vexed and humiliated by 
it. The empty forms become nauseous in the midst 
of this honest and wholesome reality of out-of- 
doors. 

Hence the necessity of these quiet retreats 
in the forests, in the water-guarded islands, in 
the cloud-girdled mountains. Here the world is 
not seen or heard. Here the king may live with 
such approach to nature as his false and deformed 
ediication will allow. He is surrounded by nothing 
but the world of servants and courtiers, and it 
requires little effort of the imagination to consider 
himself chief and lord. 

It was this spirit which in the decaying ripeness 
•of the Bourbon dynasty drove the Louis from Paris 
to Versailles and from Versailles to Marly. Mil- 
lions were wasted to build the vast monument of 
royal fatuity, and when it was done the Grand 
Monarque found it necessary to fly from time to 
time to the sham solitude and mock retirement he 
had built an hour away. 

"When Philip V. came down from France to his 
splendid exile on the throne of Spain, he soon 
wearied of the interminable ceremonies of the Cas- 
tilian court, and rinding one day, while hunting, a 
pleasant farm on the territory of the Segovian 
monks, flourishing in a wrinkle of the Guadarrama 
Mountains, he bought it, and reared the Palace of 
La Granja. It is only kings who can build their 



160 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

castles in the air of palpable stones and mortar. 
This lordly pleasure-house stands four thousand 
feet above the sea level. On this commanding 
height, in this savage Alpine loneliness, in the 
midst of a scenery once wildly beautiful, but now 
shorn and shaven into a smug likeness of a French 
garden, Philip passed all the later years of his 
gloomy and inglorious life. 

It has been ever since a most tempting summer- 
house to all the Bourbons. When the sun is calcin- 
ing the plains of Castile, and the streets of Madrid 
are white with the hot light of midsummer, this 
palace in the clouds is as cool and shadowy as 
spring twilights. And besides, as all public busi- 
ness is transacted in Madrid, and La Granja is a 
day's journey away, it is too much trouble to send 
a courier every day for the royal signature, — or, 
rather, rubric, for royalty in Spain is above hand- 
writing, and gives its majestic ajDproval with a 
nourish of the pen, — so that everything waits a 
week or so, and much business goes finally un- 
done ; and this is the highest triumph of Spanish 
industry and skill. 

We had some formal business with the court of the 
Eegent, and were not sorry to learn that his High- 
ness would not return to the capital for some weeks, 
and that consequently, following the precedent of 
a certain prophet, we must go to the mountain. 

We found at the Estacion del Norte the state 



A CASTLE IN THE AIE. 161 

railway carriage of her late Majesty, — a brilliant 
creation of yellow satin and profuse gilding, a 
boudoir on wheels, — not too full of a distinguished 
company. Some of the leading men of Kew Spain, 
one or two ministers, were there, and we passed a 
pleasant two hours on the road in that most sedu- 
cing of all human occupations, — talking politics. 

It is remarkable that whenever a nation is re- 
modelling its internal structure, the subject most 
generally discussed is the constitutional system of 
the United States. The republicans usually adopt 
it solid. The monarchists study it with a jealous 

interest. I fell into conversation with Seiior , 

one of the best minds in Spain, an enlightened 
though conservative statesman. He said : " It is 
hard for Europe to adopt a settled belief about you. 
America is a land of wonders, of contradictions. 
One party calls your system freedom, another 
anarchy. In all legislative assemblies of Europe, 
republicans and absolutists alike draw arguments 
from America. But what cannot be denied are 
the effects, the results. These are evident, some- 
thing vast and grandiose, a life and movement 
to which the Old World is stranger." He after- 
wards referred with great interest to the imaginary 
imperialist movement in America, and raised his 
eyebrows in polite incredulity when I assured him 
there was as much danger of Spain becoming Mo- 
hammedan as of America becoming imperialist. 



162 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

"We stopped at the little station of Villaiba, in 
the midst of the wide brown table-land that 
stretches from Madrid to the Escorial. At Villalba 
we found the inevitable swarm of beggars, who al- 
ways know by the sure instinct of wretchedness 
where a harvest of cuartos is to be achieved. I 
have often passed Villalba and have seen nothing 
but the station-master and the water-vender. But 
to-day, because there were a half-dozen Excellencies 
on the train, the entire mendicant force of the dis- 
trict was on parade. They could not have known 
these gentlemen were coming; they must have 
scented pennies in the air. 

Awaiting us at the rear of the station were three 
enormous lumbering diligences, each furnished with 
nine superb mules, — four pairs and a leader. They 
were loaded with gaudy trappings, and their shiny 
coats, and backs shorn into graceful arabesques, 
showed that they did not belong to the working 
classes, but enjoyed the gentlemanly leisure of 
official station. The drivers wore a smart postilion 
uniform and the royal crown on their caps. 

We threw some handfuls of copper and bronze 
among the picturesque mendicants. They gathered 
them up with grave Castilian decorum, and said, 
"God will repay your Graces." The postilions 
cracked their whips, the mules shook their bells 
gayly, the heavy wagons started off at a full gallop, 
and the beggars said, "May your Graces go with 
God!" 



A CASTLE IN THE AIR. 163 

It was the end of July, and the sky was blue 
and cloudless. The fine, soft light of the afternoon 
was falling on the tawny slopes and the close-reaped 
fields. The harvest was over. In the fields on 
either side they were threshing their grain, not as 
in the outside world, with the whirring of loud and 
swift machinery, nor even with the active and 
lively swinging of flails ; but in the open air, 
under the warm sky, the cattle were lazily tread- 
ing out the corn on the bare ground, to be win- 
nowed by the wandering wind. No change from 
the time of Solomon. Through an infinity of ages, 
ever since corn and cattle were, the Iberian far- 
mer in this very spot had driven his beasts over 
his crop, and never dreamed of a better way of 
doing the work. 

Not only does the Spaniard not seek for improve- 
ments, he utterly despises and rejects them. The 
poorer classes especially, who would find an enor- 
mous advantage in increased production, lightening 
their hard lot by a greater plenty of the means of 
life, regard every introduction of improved ma- 
chinery as a blow at the rights of labor. When 
many years ago a Dutch vintner went to Yalde- 
penas and so greatly improved the manufacture of 
that excellent but ill-made wine that its price 
immediately rose in the Madrid market, he was 
mobbed and plundered by his ignorant neighbors, 
because, as they said, he was laboring to make wine 



164 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

dearer. In every attempt which has been made to 
manufacture improved machinery in Spain, the 
greatest care has to be taken to prevent the work- 
men from maliciously damaging the works, which 
they imagine are to take the bread from the mouths 
of their children. 

So strong is this feeling in every department 
of national life, that the Mayoral who drove our 
spanking nine-in-hand received with very ill humor 
our suggestion that the time could be greatly short- 
ened by a Fell railroad over the hills to La Granja. 
" What would become of nosotros ? " he asked. And 
it really would seem a pity to annihilate so much 
picturesqueness and color at the bidding of mere 
utility. A gayly embroidered Andalusian jacket, 
bright scarlet silk waistcoat, — a rich wide belt, into 
which his long knife, the Navaja, was jauntily thrust, 
— buckskin breeches, with Yalentian stockings, 
which, as they are open at the bottom, have been aptly 
likened to a Spaniard's purse, — and shoes made of 
Murcian matting, composed his natty outfit. By 
his side on the box sat the Zagal, his assistant, 
whose especial function seemed to be to swear at 
the cattle. I have heard some eloquent impreca- 
tion in my day. "Our army swore terribly" at 
Hilton Head. The objuration of the boatmen of 
the Mississij)pi is very vigorous and racy. But I 
have never assisted at a session of profanity so 
loud, so energetic, so original as that with which 






A CASTLE IN THE AIR. 165 

this Castilian postilion regaled us. The wonderful 
consistency and perseverance with which the role 
was sustained was worthy of a much "better cause. 

He began by yelling in a coarse, strident voice, 
"Arre! arre!" (Get up i) with a vicious emphasis 
on the final syllable. This is one of the Moorish 
words that have remained fixed like fossils in the 
language of the conquerors. Its constant use in the 
mouths of muleteers has given them the name of 
arrieros. This general admonition being addressed 
to the team at large, the Zagal descended to details, 
and proceeded to vilipend the galloping beasts 
separately, beginning with the leader. He in- 
formed him, still in this wild, jerking scream, that 
he was a dog, that his mother's character was far 
from that of Caesar's wife, and that if more speed 
was not exhibited on this down grade, he would be 
forced to resort to extreme measures. At the men- 
tion of a whip, the tall male mule who led the team 
dashed gallantly off, and the diligence was soon en- 
veloped in a cloud of dust. This seemed to excite 
our gay charioteer to the highest degree. He screamed 
lustily at his mules, addressing each personally by its 
name. " Andaluza, arre ! Thou of Arragon, go ! 
Beware the scourge, Manchega ! " and every animal 
acknowledged the special attention by shaking its 
ears and bells and whisking its shaven tail, as the 
diligence rolled furiously over the dull drab plain. 

Tor three hours the iron lungs of the muleteer 



166 CASTILIAN DAYS 

101 



knew no rest or pause. Several times in the j 
ney we stopped at a post station to change o 
cattle, but the same brazen throat sufficed for I 
the threatening and encouragement that kept the 
at the top of their speed. Before we arrived 
our journey's end, however, he was hoarse as 
raven, and kept one hand pressed to his jaw 
reinforce the exhausted muscles of speech. 

When the wide and dusty plain was passed, t 

began by a slow and winding ascent the passage i 

the Guadarrama. The road is an excellent one, ar 

although so seldom used, — a few months only f 

the year, — it is kept in the most perfect repair. ; 

is exclusively a summer road, being in the winte 

impassable with snow. It affords at every turn th 

most charming compositions of mountain and woode ; 

valley. At intervals we passed a mounted Guard? 

Civil, who sat as motionless in his saddle as ai 

equestrian statue, and saluted as the coaches rattle< 

by. And once or twice in a quiet nook by thi 

roadside we came upon the lonely cross that marked' 

the spot where a man had been murdered. 

It was nearly sunset when we arrived at the 
summit of the pass. We halted to ask for a glass 
of water at the hut of a gray-haired woman on the 
mountain-top. It was given and received as al- 
ways in this pious country, in the name of God. 
As we descended, the mules seemed to have gained 
new vigor from the prospect of an easy stretch of 



A CASTLE IN THE AIR. 167 

facilis descensus, and the Zagal employed what 
was left of his voice in provoking them to speed 
by insulting remarks upon their lineage. The 
quick twilight fell as we entered a vast forest of 
pines that clothed the mountain side. The enor- 
mous trees looked in the dim evening light like the 
forms of the Anakim, maimed with lightning but 
still defying heaven. Years of battle with the 
mountain vdnds had twisted them into every con- 
ceivable shape of writhing and distorted deformity. 
;!l never saw trees that so nearly conveyed the idea 
of being the visible prison of tortured Dryads. 
Their trunks, white and glistening with oozing 
resin, added to the ghostly impression they created 
in the uncertain and failing light. 

We reached the valley and rattled by a sleepy 
village, where we were greeted by a chorus of out- 
raged curs whose beauty-sleep we had disturbed, 
Mind then began the slow ascent of the hill where 
)Bt. Ildefonso stands. We had not gone far when 
jve heard a pattering of hoofs and a ringing of 
sabres coming down the road to meet us. The 
diligence stopped, and the Introducer of Ambassa- 
dors jumped to the ground and announced, " El 
?liegente del Eeino ! " It was the Eegent, the 
- ourteous and amiable Marshal Serrano, who had 
fiidden out from the palace to welcome his guests, 
nd who, after hasty salutations, galloped back to 
La Granja, where we soon arrived. 



168 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

We were assigned the apartments usually given 
to the Papal Nuncio, and slept with an episcopal 
peace of mind. In the morning, as we were walk- 
ing about the gardens, we saw looking from the 
palace window one of. the most accomplished gen- 
tlemen and diplomatists of the new regime. He 
descended and did the honors of the place. The 
system of gardens and fountains is enormous. It 
is evidently modelled upon Versailles, but the copy 
is in many respects finer than the original. The 
peculiarity of the site, while offering great difficul- 
ties, at the same time enhances the triumph of 
success. It is true, this is a garden taught to bloom 
upon a barren mountain-side. The earth in which 
these trees are planted was brought from those dim 
plains in the distance on the backs of men and 
mules. The pipes that supply these innumerable 
fountains were laid on the bare rocks and the soil 
was thrown over them. Every tree was guarded 
and watched like a baby. There was probably 
never a garden that grew under such circumstances, 
— but the result is superb. The fountains are fed 
by a vast reservoir in the mountain, and the water 
they throw into the bright air is as clear as morning 
dew. Every alley and avenue is a vista that ends 
in a vast picture of shaggy hills or far-off plains, — 
while behind the royal gardens towers the lordly 
peak of the Penalara, thrust eight thousand feet 
into the thin blue ether. 



A CASTLE IN THE AIE. 169 

Tlie palace has its share of history. It witnessed 
the abdication of the uxorious "bigot Philip V. in 
1724, and his resumption of the crown the next 
year at the instance of his proud and turbulent 
Parmesan wife. His bones rest in the church here, 
as he hated the Austrian line too intensely to share 
with them the gorgeous crypt of the Escorial. His 
wife, Elizabeth Fames e, lies under the same grave- 
stone with him, as if unwilling to forego even in 
death that tremendous influence whicli her vigorous 
vitality had always exercised over his wavering and 
sensual nature. "Das Ewige Weibliche" masters 
and guides him still. 

This retreat in the autumn of 1832 was the 
scene of a prodigious exhibition of courage and 
energy on the part of another Italian woman, Dona 
Louisa Carlota de Bourbon. Ferdinand VII., his 
mind weakened by illness, and influenced by his 
ministers, had proclaimed his brother Don Carlos 
heir to the throne, to the exclusion of his own in- 
fant daughter. His wife, Queen Christine, broken 
down by the long conflict, had given way in despair. 
But her sister, Dona Louisa Carlota, heard of the 
news in the South of Spain, and, leaving her babies 
at Cadiz (two little urchins, one of whom was to be 
King Consort, and the other was to fall by his 
cousin Montpensier's hand in the field of Cara- 
banchel), she posted without a moment's pause for 
rest or sleep over mountains and plains from the 



170 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

sea to La Granja. She fought with the lackeys 
and the ministers twenty-four hours before she 
could see her sister the Queen. Having breathed 
into Christine her own invincible spirit, they suc- 
ceeded, after endless pains, in reaching the King. 
Obstinate as the weak often are, he refused at. first 
to listen to them ; but by their womanly wiles, their 
Italian policy, their magnetic force, they at last 
brought him to revoke his decree in favor of Don 
Carlos and to recognize the right of his daughters to 
the crown. Then, terrible in her triumph, Dona 
Louisa Carlota sent for the Minister Calomarde, 
overwhelmed him with the coarsest and most furi- 
ous abuse, and, unable to confine her victorious rage 
and hate to words alone, she slapped the astounded 
minister in the face. Calomarde, trembling with 
rage, bowed and said, " A white hand cannot of- 
fend." 

There is nothing stronger than a woman's weak- 
ness, or weaker than a woman's strength. 

A few years later, when Ferdinand was in his 
grave, and the baby Isabel reigned under the re- 
gency of Christine, a movement in favor of the 
Constitution of 1812 burst out, where revolutions 
always do, in the South, and spread rapidly over 
the contiguous provinces. The infection gained the 
troops of the royal guard at La Granja, and they 
surrounded the palace bawling for the Constitution. 
The Eegentess, with a proud reliance upon her 



A CASTLE IN THE AIR. 171 

own power, ordered them to send a deputation to 
her apartment. A dozen of the mutineers came in, 
and demanded the Constitution. 

" What is that ? " asked the Queen. 

They looked at each other and cudgelled their 
brains. They had never thought of that before. 

" Caramba ! " said they. " We don't know. They 
say it is a good thing, and will raise oar pay and 
make salt cheaper." 

Their political economy was somewhat flimsy, 
but they had the bayonets, and the Queen was 
compelled to give way and proclaim the Constitu- 
tion. 

I must add one trifling reminiscence more of La 
Granja, which has also its little moral. A friend of 
mine, a Colonel of Engineers, in the summer before 
the Eevolution, was standing before the palace with 
some officers, when a mean-looking cur ran past. 

" What an ugly dog ! " said the Colonel. 

" Hush ! " replied another, with an awe-struck 
face. " That is the dog of his Eoyal Highness the 
Prince of Asturias." 

The Colonel unfortunately had a logical mind, 
and failed to see that ownership had any bearing 
on a purely sesthetic question. He defined his 
position. " I do not think the dog is ugly because 
he belongs to the Prince. I only mean the Prince 
has an ugly dog." 

The window just above them slammed, and an- 



172 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

other officer came up and said that the Adversary- 
was to pay. " The Queen was at the window and 
heard every word yon said." 

An hour after the Colonel received an order from 
the commandant of the place, revoking his leave 
of absence and ordering him to dnty in Madrid. It 
is not very surprising that this officer was at the 
Bridge of Alcolea. 

At noon the day grew dark with clouds, and the 
black storm- wreath came down over the mountains. 
A terrific fire of artillery resounded for a half-hour 
in the craggy peaks about us, and a driving shower 
passed over palace and gardens. Then the sun 
came out again, the pleasure-grounds were fresher 
and greener than ever, and the visitors thronged in 
the court of the palace to see the fountains in play. 
The Regent led the way on foot. The General fol- 
lowed in a pony phaeton, and ministers, adjutants, 
and the population of the district trooped along in 
a party-colored mass. 

It was a good afternoon's work to visit all the 
fountains. They are twenty-six in number, strewn 
over the undulating grounds. People who visit 
Paris usually consider a day of Grandes Eaux at 
Versailles the last word of this species of costly 
trifling. But the waters at Versailles bear no com- 
parison witli those of La Granja. The sense is 
fatigued and bewildered here with their magnifi- 
cence and infinite variety. The vast reservoir in 



A CASTLE IN THE AIE. 173 

the bosom of the mountain, filled with the purest 
water, gives a possibility of more superb effects 
than have been attained anywhere else in the world. 
The Fountain of the Winds is one, where a vast 
mass of water springs into the air from the foot of 
a great cavernous rock ; there is a succession of ex- 
quisite cascades called the Eace-Course, filled with 
graceful statuary ; a colossal group of Apollo slay- 
ing the Python, who in his death agony bleeds a 
torrent of water; the Basket of Flowers, which 
throws up a system of forty jets ; the great single 
jet called Fame, which leaps one hundred and 
thirty feet into the air, a Niagara reversed ; and 
the crowning glory of the garden, the Baths of 
Diana, an immense stage scene in marble and 
bronze, crowded with nymphs and hunting parties, 
wild beasts and birds, and everywhere the wildest 
luxuriance of spouting waters. We were told that 
it was one of the royal caprices of a recent tenant 
of the palace to emulate her chaste prototype of 
the silver bow by choosing this artistic basin for 
her ablutions, a sufficient number of civil guards 
being posted to prevent the approach of Castilian 
Actions. "Though if such an accident had hap- 
pened," said the satirical Castilian, "the intruder 
would hardly have been punished with the antlers 
of the Greek. Such favors were reserved for a 
nearer and dearer head." 

As the bilious Philip paused before this mass of 



174 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

sculptured extravagance, lie looked at it a moment 
with evident pleasure. Then he thought of the 
bill, and whined, "Thou hast amused me three 
minutes and hast cost me three millions." 

To do Philip justice, he did not allow the bills 
to trouble him much. He died owing forty-five 
million piastres, which his dutiful son refused to 
pay. When you deal with Bourbons, it is well to 
remember the Spanish proverb, " A sparrow in the 
hand is better than a buzzard on the wing." 

We wasted an hour in walking through the 
palace. It is, like all palaces, too fine and dreary 
to describe. Miles of drawing-rooms and boudoirs, 
with an infinity of tapestry and gilt chairs, all the 
apartments haunted by the demon of ennui. All 
idea of comfort is sacrificed to costly glitter and 
flimsy magnificence. Some fine paintings were 
pining in exile on the desolate walls. They looked 
homesick for the Museum, where they could be 
seen of men. 

The next morning we drove down the mountain 
and over the rolling plain to the fine old city of 
Segovia. In point of antiquity and historic inter- 
est it is inferior to no town in Spain. It has lost 
its ancient importance as a seat of government and 
a mart of commerce. Its population is now not 
more than eleven thousand. Its manufactures have 
gone to decay. Its woollen works, which once em- 
ployed fourteen thousand persons and produced an- 



A CASTLE IN THE AIR. 175 

nually twenty-five thousand pieces of cloth, now 
sustain a sickly existence and turn out not more 
than two hundred pieces yearly. Its mint, which 
once spread over Spain a Dansean shower of 
ounces and dollars, is now reduced to the humble 
office of striking copper cuartos. More than two 
centuries ago this decline began. Boisel, who was 
there in 1669, speaks of the city as "presque de- 
sert et fort pauvre." He mentions as a mark of 
the general unthrift that the day he arrived there 
was no bread in town until two o'clock in the after- 
noon, " and no one was astonished at it." 

Yet even in its poverty and rags it has the air of 
a town that has seen better days. Tradition says 
it was founded by Hercules. It was an important 
city of the Eoman Empire, and a great capital in 
the days of the Arab monarchy. It was the court 
of the star-gazing King Alonso the Wise. Through 
a dozen centuries it was the flower of the moun- 
tains of Castile. Each succeeding age and race 
beautified and embellished it, and each, departing, 
left the trace of its passage in the abiding granite 
of its monuments. The Eomans left the glorious 
aqueduct, that work of demigods who scorned to 
mention it in their histories ; the Goths bequeathed 
to later times their ideas of ecclesiastical architec- 
ture ; and the Arabs the science of fortification and 
the industrial arts. 

Its very ruin and decay makes it only more 



176 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

precious to the traveller. There are here none of 
the modern and commonplace evidences of life and 
activity that shock the artistic sense in other towns. 
All is old, moribund, and picturesque. It lies here 
in the heart of the Guadarramas, lost and forgotten 
by the civilization of the age, muttering in its se- 
nile dream of the glories of an older world. It has 
not vitality enough to attract a railroad, and so is 
only reached by a long and tiresome journey by 
diligence. Its solitude is rarely intruded upon by 
the impertinent curious, and the red back of Mur- 
ray is a rare apparition in its winding streets. 

Yet those who eome are richly repaid. One does 
not quickly forget the impression produced by the 
first view of the vast aqueduct, as you drive into 
the town from La Granja. It comes upon you in 
an instant, — the two great ranges of superimposed 
arches, over one hundred feet high, spanning the 
ravine-like suburb from the outer hills to the Al- 
cazar. You raise your eyes from the market-place, 
with its dickering crowd, from the old and squalid 
houses clustered like shot rubbish at the foot of 
the chasm, to this grand and soaring wonder of 
utilitarian architecture, with something of a fancy 
that it was never made, that it has stood there since 
the morning of the world. It has the lightness and 
the strength, the absence of ornament and the 
essential beauty, the vastness and the perfection, of 
a work of nature. 



A CASTLE IN THE AIR. 177 

It is one of those gigantic works of Trajan, so 
common in that magnificent age that Eoman au- 
thors do not allude to it. It was built to bring the 
cool mountain water of the Sierra Fonfria a distance 
of nine miles through the hills, the gulches, and the 
pine forests of Valsain, and over the open plain to 
the thirsty city of Segovia. The aqueduct proper 
runs from the old tower of Caseron three thousand 
feet to the reservoir where the water deposits its 
sand and sediment, and thence begins the series of 
one hundred and nineteen arches, which traverse 
three thousand feet more and pass the valley, the 
arrdbal, and reach the citadel. It is composed of 
great blocks of granite, so perfectly framed and 
fitted that not a particle of mortar or cement is 
employed in the construction. 

The wonder of the work is not so much in its 
vastness or its beauty as in its tremendous solidity 
and duration. A portion of it had been cut away 
by barbarous armies during the fifteenth century, 
and in the reign of Isabella the Catholic the monk- 
architect of the Parral, Juan Escovedo, the greatest 
builder of his day in Spain, repaired it. These re- 
pairs have themselves twice needed repairing since 
then. Marshal Ney, when he came to this portion 
of the monument, exclaimed, "Here begins the 
work of men's hands." 

The true Segovian would hoot at you if you as- 
signed any mortal paternity to the aqueduct. He 

8* L 



178 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

calls it the Devil's Bridge, and tells you this story. 
The Evil One was in love with a pretty girl of the 
upper town, and full of protestations of devotion. 
The fair Segovian listened to him one evening, 
when her plump arms ached with the work of bring- 
ing water from the ravine, and promised eyes of 
favor if his Infernal Majesty would build an aque- 
duct to her door before morning. He worked all 
night, like the Devil, and the maiden, opening her 
black eyes at sunrise, saw him putting the last 
stone in the last arch, as the first ray of the sun 
lighted on his shining tail. The Church, we think 
very unfairly, decided that he had failed, and re- 
leased the coquettish contractor from her promise ; 
and it is said the Devil has never trusted a Sego- 
vian out of his sight again. 

The bartizaned keep of the Moorish Alcazar is 
perched on the western promontory of the city that 
guards the meeting of the streams Eresma and 
Clamores. It has been in the changes of the warring 
times a palace, a fortress, a prison (where our friend 
• — everybody's friend — Gil Bias was once con- 
fined), and of late years a college of artillery. In 
one of its rooms Alonso the Wise studied the 
heavens more than was good for his orthodoxy, and 
from one of its windows a lady of the court once 
dropped a royal baby, of the bad blood of Tras- 
tamara. Henry of Trastamara will seem more real 
if we connect him with fiction. He was the son of 



A CASTLE IN THE AIR. 179 

" La Favorita," who will outlast all legitimate prin- 
cesses, in the deathless music of Donizetti. 

Driving through a throng of beggars that en- 
cumbered the carriage wheels as grasshoppers some- 
times do the locomotives on a Western railway, we 
came to the fine Gothic Cathedral, built by Gil de 
Ontanon, father and son, in the early part of the 
sixteenth century. It is a delight to the eyes ; the 
rich harmonious color of the stone, the symmetry 
of proportion, the profuse opulence and grave finish 
of the details. It was built in that happy era of 
architecture when a builder of taste and culture 
had all the past of Gothic art at his disposition, 
and before the degrading influence of the Jesuits 
appeared in the churches of Europe. Within the 
Cathedral is remarkably airy and graceful in effect. 
A most judicious use has been made of the exqui- 
site salmon-colored marbles of the country in the 
great altar and the pavement. 

We were met by civil ecclesiastics of the founda- 
tion and shown the beauties and the wonders of the 
place. Among much that is worthless, there is one 
very impressive Descent from the Cross by Juan de 
Juni, of which that excellent Mr. Madoz says " it 
is worthy to rank with the best masterpieces of 
Eaphael or — Mengs " ; as if one should say of a 
poet that he was equal to Shakespeare or Southey. 

We walked through the cloisters and looked at 
the tombs. A flood of warm light poured chrough 



180 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

the graceful arches and lit up the trees in the gar- 
den and set the birds to singing, and made these 
cloisters pleasanter to remember than they usually 
are. Our attendant priest told us, with an earnest 
credulity that was very touching, the story of Maria 
del Salto, Mary of the Leap, whose history was 
staring at us from the wall. She was a Jewish lady, 
whose husband had doubts of her discretion, and so 
threw her from a local Tarpeian rock. As she fell 
she invoked the Virgin, and came down easily, sus- 
tained, as you see in the picture, by her faith and 
her petticoats. 

As we parted from the good fathers and entered 
our carriages at the door of the church, the swarm 
of mendicants had become an army. The word had 
doubtless gone through the city of the outlandish 
men who had gone into the Cathedral with whole 
coats, and the result was a levee- en masse of the 
needy. Every coin that was thrown to them but 
increased the clamor, as it confirmed them in their 
idea of the boundless wealth and munificence of the 
givers. We recalled the profound thought of Emer- 
son, " If the rich were only as rich as the poor think 
them ! " 

At last we drove desperately away through the 
ragged and screaming throng. We passed by the 
former home of the Jeronomite monks of the Parral, 
which was once called an earthly paradise, and in 
later years has been a pen for swine ; past crumbling 



A CASTLE IN THE AIR. 181 

convents and ruined churches ; past the charming 
Eonianesque San Millan, girdled with its round- 
arched cloisters ; the granite palace of his Eeverence 
the Bishop of Segovia, and the elegant tower of St. 
Esteban, where the Koman is dying and the Gothic 
is dawning ; and every step of the route is a study 
and a joy to the antiquarian. 

But though enriched by all these legacies of an 
immemorial past, there seems no hope, no future for 
Segovia. It is as dead as the cities of the Plain. 
Its spindles have rusted into silence. Its gay com- 
pany is gone. Its streets are too large for the popula- 
tion, and yet they swarm with beggars. I had often 
heard it compared in outline to a ship, — the sunrise 
astern and the prow pointing westward, — and as we 
drove away that day and I looked back to the re- 
ceding town, it seemed to me like a grand hulk of 
some richly laden galleon, aground on the rock that 
holds it, alone, abandoned to its fate among the 
barren billows of the tumbling ridges, its crew tired 
out with struggling and apathetic in despair, mocked 
by the finest air and the clearest sunshine that ever 
shone, and gazing always forward to the new world 
and the new times hidden in the rosy sunset, which 
they shall never see. 



182 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 

Emilio Castelar said to me one day, " Toledo is 
the most remarkable city in Spain. You will find 
there three strata of glories, — Gothic, Arab, and 
Castilian, — and an upper crust of beggars and 
silence." 

I went there in the pleasantest time of the year, 
the first days of June. The early harvest was in 
progress, and the sunny road ran through golden 
fields which were enlivened by the reapers gather- 
ing in their grain with shining sickles. The borders 
of the Tagus were so cool and fresh that it was hard 
to believe one was in the arid land of Castile. From 
Madrid to Aranjuez you meet the usual landscapes 
of dun hillocks and pale-blue vegetation, such as are 
only seen in nature in Central Spain, and only seen 
in art on the matchless canvas of Velazquez. But 
from the time you cross the tawny flood of the 
Tagus just north of Aranjuez, the valley is glad- 
dened by its waters all the way to the Primate City. 

I am glad I am not writing a guide-book, and do 
not feel any responsibility resting upon me of ad- 
vising the gentle reader to stop at Aranjuez or to go 
by on the other side. There is a most amiable and 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 183 

praiseworthy class of travellers who feel a certain 
moral necessity impelling them to visit every royal 
abode within their reach. They always see precise- 
ly the same things, — some thousand of gilt chairs, 
some faded tapestry and marvellous satin upholstery, 
a room in porcelain, and a room in imitation of some 
other room somewhere else, and a picture or two by 
that worthy and tedious young man, Eaphael Mengs. 
I knew I would see all these things at Aranjuez, 
and so contented myself with admiring its pretty 
site, its stone-cornered brick facade, its high- 
shouldered French roof, and its general air of the 
Place Eoyale, from the outside. The gardens are 
very pleasant, and lonely enough for the most 
philosophic stroller. A clever Spanish writer says 
of them, "They are sombre as the thoughts of 
Philip II., mysterious and gallant as the pleasures 
of Philip IV." To a revolutionary mind, it is a 
certain pleasure to remember that this was the 
scene of the emeute that drove Charles IV. from 
his throne, and the Prince of Peace from his queen's 
boudoir. Ferdinand VII., the turbulent and restless 
Prince of Asturias, reaped the immediate profit of 
his father's abdication ; but the two worthless crea- 
tures soon called in Napoleon to decide the squab- 
ble, which he did in his leonine way by taking the 
crown away from both of them and handing it over 
for safe- keeping to his lieutenant brother Joseph. 
Honor among thieves ! — a silly proverb, as one 



184: CASTILIAN DAYS. 

readily sees if he falls into their hands, or reads 
the history of kings. 

If Toledo had been built, by some caprice of en- 
lightened power, especially for a show city, it could 
not be finer in effect. In detail, it is one vast mu- 
seum. In ensemble, it stands majestic on its hills, 
with its long lines of palaces and convents terraced 
around the rocky slope, and on the height the 
soaring steeples of a swarm of churches piercing 
the blue, and the huge cube of the Alcazar crown- 
ing the topmost crest, and domineering the scene. 
The magnificent zigzag road which leads up the 
steep hillside from the bridge of Alcantara gives 
an indefinable impression, as of the lordly ramp of 
some fortress of impossible extent. 

This road is new, and in perfect condition. But 
do not imagine you can judge the city by the ap- 
proaches. When your carriage has mounted the 
hill and passed the evening promenade of the To- 
ledans, the quaint triangular Place, — I had nearly 
called it Square, — " w T aking laughter in indolent re- 
viewers," the Zocodover, you are lost in the daedalian 
windings of the true streets of Toledo, where you 
can touch the walls on either side, and where two 
carriages could no more pass each other than two 
locomotives could salute and go by on the same 
track. This interesting experiment, which is so 
common in our favored land, could never be tried 
in Toledo, as I believe there is only one turn-out in 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 185 

the city, a minute omnibus with striped linen hang- 
ings at the sides, driven by a young Castilian whose 
love of money is the root of much discussion when 
you pay his bill. It is a most remarkable establish- 
ment. The horses can cheerfully do their mile in 
fifteen or twenty minutes, but they make more row 
about it than a high -pressure Mississippi steamer ; 
and the crazy little trap is noisier in proportion to 
its size than anything I have ever seen, except per- 
haps an Indiana tree-toad. If you make an ex- 
cursion outside the walls, the omnibus, noise and 
all, is inevitable, let it come. But inside the city 
you must walk ; the slower the better, for every 
door is a study. 

It is hard to conceive that this was once a great 
capital with a population of two hundred thousand 
souls. You can easily walk from one end of the 
city to the other in less than half an hour, and the 
houses that remain seem comfortably filled by eigh- 
teen thousand inhabitants. But in this narrow 
space once swarmed that enormous and busy mul- 
titude. The city was walled about by powerful 
stone ramparts, which yet stand in all their massy 
perfection. So there could have been no suburbs. 
This great aggregation of humanity lived and toiled 
on the crests and in the wrinkles of the seven hills 
we see to-day. How important were the industries 
of the earlier days we can guess from the single 
fact that John of Padilla, when he rose in defence 



186 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

of municipal liberty in the time of Charles V., drew 
in one day from the teeming workshops twenty 
thousand fighting men. He met the usual fate of 
all Spanish patriots, shameful and cruel death. His 
palace was razed to the ground. Successive govern- 
ments, in shifting fever-fits of liberalism and abso- 
lutism, have set up and pulled down his statue. 
But his memory is loved and honored, and the ex- 
ample of this noblest of the Comuneros impresses 
powerfully to-day the ardent young minds of the 
new Spain. 

Your first walk is of course to the Cathedral, 
the Primate Church of the kingdom. Besides its 
ecclesiastical importance, it is well worthy of notice 
in itself. It is one of the purest specimens of Gothic 
architecture in existence, and is kept in an admira- 
ble state of preservation. Its situation is not the 
most favorable. It is approached by a network of 
descending streets, all narrow and winding, as streets 
were always built under the ' intelligent rule of the 
Moors. They preferred to be cool in summer and 
sheltered in winter, rather than to lay out great 
deserts of boulevards, the haunts of sunstroke and 
pneumonia. The site of the Cathedral was chosen 
from strategic reasons by St. Eugene, who built 
there his first Episcopal Church. The Moors made 
a mosque of it when they conquered Castile, and 
the fastidious piety of St. Ferdinand would not 
permit him to worship in a shrine thus profaned. 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 187 

He tore down the old church and laid, in 1227, the 
foundations of this magnificent structure, which 
was two centuries after his death in building. There 
is, however, great unity of purpose and execution 
in this Cathedral, due doubtless to the fact that the 
architect Perez gave fifty years of his long life to 
the superintendence of the early work. Inside 
and outside it is marked by a grave and harmonious 
majesty. The great western faQade is enriched 
with three splendid portals, — the side ones called 
the doors of Hell and Judgment ; and the central a 
beautiful ogival arch divided into two smaller ones, 
and adorned with a lavish profusion of delicately 
sculptured figures of saints and prophets ; on the 
chaste and severe cornice above, a group of spirited 
busts represents the Last Supper. There are five 
other doors to the temple, of which the door of the 
Lions is the finest, and just beside it a heavy Ionic 
portico in the most detestable taste indicates the 
feeling and culture that survived in the reign of 
Charles IV. 

To the north of the west facade rises the massive 
tower. It is not among the tallest in the world, 
being three hundred and twenty-four feet high, but 
is very symmetrical and impressive. In the preser- 
vation of its pyramidal purpose it is scarcely infe- 
rior to that most consummate work, the tower of 
St. Stephen's in Vienna. It is composed of three 
superimposed structures, gradually diminishing in 



188 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

solidity and massiveness from the square base to 
the high-springing octagonal spire, garlanded with 
thorny crowns. It is balanced at the south end of 
the facade by the pretty cupola and lantern of the 
Mozarabic Chapel, the work of the Greek Theoto- 
copouli. 

But we soon grow tired of the hot glare of June, 
and pass in a moment into the cool twilight vast- 
ness of the interior, refreshing to body and soul. 
Five fine naves, with eighty-four pillars formed 
each of sixteen graceful columns, — the entire edi- 
fice measuring four hundred feet in length and two 
hundred feet in breadth, — a grand and shadowy 
temple grove of marble and granite. At all times 
the light is of an unearthly softness and purity, 
toned by the exquisite windows and rosaces. But 
as evening draws on, you should linger till the 
sacristan grows peremptory, to watch the gorgeous 
glow of the western sunlight on the blazing roses 
of the portals, and the marvellous play of rich 
shadows and faint gray lights in the eastern chapels, 
where the grand aisles sweep in their perfect curves 
around the high altar. A singular effect is here 
created by the gilded organ pipes thrust out hori- 
zontally from the choir. When the powerful choral 
anthems of the church peal out over the kneeling 
multitude, it requires little fancy to imagine them 
the golden trumpets of concealed archangels, who 
would be quite at home in that incomparable choir. 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 189 

If one should speak of all the noteworthy tilings 
you meet in this Cathedral, he would find himself 
in danger of following in the footsteps of Mr. 
Parro, who wrote a handbook of Toledo, in which 
seven hundred and forty-five pages are devoted to 
a hasty sketch of the Basilica. For five hundred 
years enormous wealth and fanatical piety have 
worked together and in rivalry to beautify this spot. 
The boundless riches of the Church and the bound- 
less superstition of the laity have left their traces 
here in every generation in forms of magnificence 
and beauty. Each of the chapels — and there are 
twenty-one of them — is a separate masterpiece in 
its way. The finest are those of Santiago and St. 
Ildefonso, — the former built by the famous Constable 
Alvaro de Luna as a burial-place for himself and fam- 
ily, and where he and his wife lie in storied marble ; 
and the other commemorating that celebrated visit 
of the Virgin to the Bishop, which is the favorite 
theme of the artists and ecclesiastical gossips of 
Spain. 

There was probably never a morning call which 
gave rise to so much talk. It was not the first 
time the Virgin had come to Toledo. This was al- 
ways a favorite excursion of hers. She had come 
from time to time, escorted by St. Peter, St. Paul, 
and St. James. But on the morning in question, 
which was not long after Bishop Ildefonso had 
written Ms clever treatise, "De Virginitate Sae 



190 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Mariae," the Queen of Heaven came down to matin 
prayers, and, taking the Bishop's seat, listened to 
the sermon with great edification. After service 
she presented him with a nice new chasuble, as his 
own was getting rather shabby, made of " cloth of 
heaven," in token of her appreciation of his spirited 
pamphlet in her defence. This chasuble still exists 
in a chest in Asturias. If you open the chest, you 
will not see it ; but this only proves the truth of 
the miracle, for the chroniclers say the sacred vest- 
ment is invisible to mortal eyes. 

But we have another and more palpable proof of 
the truth of the history. The slab of marble on 
which the feet of the celestial visitor alighted is 
still preserved in the Cathedral in a tidy chapel 
built on the very spot where the avatar took place. 
The slab is enclosed in red jasper and guarded by 
an iron grating, and above it these words of the 
Psalmist are engraved in the stone, Adordbimus in 
loco %Cbi steterunt pedes ejus. 

This story is cut in marble and carved in wood 
and drawn upon brass and painted upon canvas, in 
a thousand shapes and forms all over Spain. You 
see in the Museum at Madrid a picture by Murillo 
devoted to this idle fancy of a cunning or dreaming 
priest. The subject seems too much for the painter. 
The Queen of Heaven looks like a pretty shop-girl 
showing a chance customer " a lovely thing in spring 
silks." 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 191 

But there can be no doubt of the serious, solemn 
earnestness with which the worthy Castilians from 
that day to this believe the romance. They came 
up in groups and families, touching their fingers to 
the sacred slab and kissing them reverentially with 
muttered prayers. A father would take the first 
kiss himself, and pass his consecrated finger around 
among his awe-struck babes, who were too brief to 
reach to the grating. Even the aged verger who 
showed us the shrine, who was so frail and so old 
that we thought he might be a ghost escaped from 
some of the mediaeval tombs in the neighborhood, 
never passed that pretty white-and-gold chapel 
without sticking in his thumb and pulling out a 
blessing. 

A few feet from this worship-worn stone, a circle 
drawn on one of the marble flags marks the spot 
where Santa Leocadia also appeared to this same 
favored Tldefonso and made her compliments on his 
pamphlet. Was ever author so happy in his sub- 
ject and his gentle readers ? The good Bishop evi- 
dently thought the story of this second apparition 
might be considered rather a heavy draught on the 
credulity of his flock, so he whipped out a con- 
venient knife and cut off a piece of her saintship's 
veil, which clenched the narrative and struck 
doubters dumb. That great king and crazy relic- 
hunter, Philip II., saw this rag in his time with 
profound emotion, — this tiger heart, who could 



192 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

order the murder of a thousand innocent beings 
without a pang. 

There is another chapel in this Cathedral which 
preaches forever its silent condemnation of Spanish 
bigotry to deaf ears. This is the Mozarabic Chapel, 
sacred to the celebration of the early Christian rite 
of Spain. During the three centuries of Moorish 
domination the enlightened and magnanimous con- 
querors guaranteed to those Christians who remained 
within their lines the free exercise of all their rights, 
including perfect freedom of worship. So that side 
by side the mosque and the church worshipped God 
each in its own way without fear or wrong. But 
when Alonso VI. recaptured the city in the eleventh 
century, he wished to establish uniformity of wor- 
ship, and forbade the use of the ancient liturgy in 
Toledo. That which the heathen had respected the 
Catholic outraged. The great Cardinal Ximenez 
restored the primitive rite and devoted this charm- 
ing chapel to its service. How ill a return was 
made for Moorish tolerance we see in the infernal 
treatment they afterwards received from king and 
Church. They made them choose between conver- 
sion and death. They embraced Christianity to 
save their lives. Then the priests said, "Perhaps 
this conversion is not genuine ! Let us send the 
heathen away out of our sight." One million of 
the best citizens of Spain were thus torn from their 
homes and landed starving on the wild African 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 193 

coast. And Te Deums were sung in the churches 
for this triumph of Catholic unity. From that 
hour Spain has never prospered. It seems as if 
she were lying ever since under the curse of these 
breaking hearts. 

Passing by a world of artistic beauties which 
never tire the eyes but soon would tire the chron- 
icler and reader, stepping over the broad bronze 
slab in the floor which covers the dust of the 
haughty primate Porto Carrero, but which bears 
neither name nor date, only this inscription of ar- 
rogant humility, Hie jacet pulvis cinis et nihil, 
we walk into the verdurous and cheerful Gothic 
cloisters. They occupy the site of the ancient 
Jewish markets, and the zealous prelate Tenorio, 
cousin to the great lady's man Don Juan, could 
think of no better way of acquiring the ground 
than that of stirring up the mob to burn the houses 
of the heretics. A fresco that adorns the gate ex- 
plains the means employed, adding insult to the 
old injury. It is a picture of a beautiful child 
hanging upon a cross ; a fiendish-looking Jew, on a 
ladder beside him, holds in his hand the child's 
heart, which he has just taken from his bleeding 
breast; he holds the dripping knife in his teeth. 
This brutal myth was used for centuries with great 
effect by the priesthood upon the mob whenever 
they wanted a Jew's money or his blood. Even 
to-day the old poison has not lost its power. This 

9 M 



194 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

very morning I heard under my window loud and 
shrill voices. I looked out and saw a group of 
brown and ragged women, each with an armful of 
baby, discussing the news from Madrid. The 
Protestants, they said, had begun to steal Catholic 
children. They talked themselves into a fury. 
Their elf-locks hung about their fierce black eyes. 
The sinews of their lean necks worked tensely in 
their voluble rage. Had they seen our mild mis- 
sionary at that moment, whom all men respect and 
all children instinctively love, they would have torn 
him in pieces in their Msened fury, and would have 
thought they were doing their duty as mothers and 
Catholics. 

This absurd and devilish charge was seriously 
made in a Madrid journal, the organ of the Mod- 
erates, and caused great fermentation for several 
days, street rows, and debates in the Cortes, before 
the excitement died away. Last summer, in the old 
Murcian town of Lorca, an English gentleman, who 
had been several weeks in the place, was attacked 
and nearly killed by a mob, who insisted that he 
was engaged in the business of stealing children, 
and using their spinal marrow for lubricating tele- 
graph wires ! What a picture of blind and savage 
ignorance is here presented ! It reminds us of that 
sad and pitiful " blood-bath revolt " of Paris, where 
the wretched mob rose against the wretched tyrant 
Louis XV., accusing him of bathing in the blood 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 195 

of children to restore his own wasted and corrupted 
energies. 

Toledo is a city where you should eschew guides 
and trust implicitly to chance in your wanderings. 
You can never be lost ; the town is so small that a 
short walk always brings you to the river or the 
wall, and there you can take a new departure. If 
you do not know where you are going, you have 
every moment the delight of some unforeseen pleas- 
ure. There is not a street in Toledo that is not rich 
in treasures of architecture, — hovels that once were 
marvels of building, balconies of curiously wrought 
iron, great doors with sculptured posts and lin- 
tels, with gracefully finished hinges, and studded 
with huge nails whose fanciful heads are as large 
as billiard balls. Some of these are still handsome 
residences, but most have fallen into neglect and 
abandonment. You may find a beggar installed in 
the ruined palace of a Moorish prince, a cobbler 
at work in the pleasure-house of a Castilian con- 
queror. The graceful carvings are mutilated and 
destroyed, the delicate arabesques are smothered 
and hidden under a triple coat of whitewash. The 
most beautiful Moorish house in the city, the so- 
called Taller del Moro, where the grim Governor of 
Huesca invited four hundred influential gentlemen 
of the province to a political dinner, and cut off all 
their heads as they entered (if we may believe the 
chronicle, which we do not), is now empty and rapid- 



196 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

ly going to ruin. The exquisite panelling of the 
walls, the endlessly varied stucco work that seems 
to have been wrought by the deft fingers of inge- 
nious fairies, is shockingly broken and marred. 
Gigantic cacti look into the windows from the outer 
court. A gay pomegranate-tree flings its scarlet 
blossoms in on the ruined floor. Eude little birds, 
have built their nests in the beautiful fretted rafters, 
and flutter in and out as busy as brokers. But of 
all the feasting and loving and plotting these lovely 
walls beheld in that strange age that seems like 
fable now, — the vivid, intelligent, scientific, toler- 
ant age of the Moors, — even the memory has 
perished utterly and forever. 

We strolled away aimlessly from this beautiful 
desolation, and soon ca^e out upon the bright and 
airy Paseo del Transito. The afternoon sunshine 
lay warm on the dull brown suburb, but a breeze 
blew freshly through the dark river-gorge, and we 
sat upon the stone benches bordering the bluff and 
gave ourselves up to the scene. To the right were 
the ruins of the Eoman bridge and the Moorish 
mills; to the left the airy arch of San Martin's 
bridge spanned the bounding torrent, and far be- 
yond stretched the vast expanse of the green val- 
ley refreshed by the river, and rolling in rank waves 
of verdure to the blue hills of Guadalupe. Below 
us on the slippery rocks that lay at the foot of the 
sheer cliffs, some luxurious fishermen reclined, idly 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 197 

watching their idle lines. The hills stretched away, 
ragged and rocky, dotted with solitary towers and 
villas. 

A squad of beggars rapidly gathered, attracted by 
the gracious faces of Las Senoras. Begging seems 
almost the only regular industry of Toledo. Be- 
sides the serious professionals, who are real artists 
in studied misery and ingenious deformity, all the 
children in town occasionally leave their marbles 
and their leap-frog to turn an honest penny by 
amateur mendicancy. 

A chorus of piteous whines went up. But La 
Sefiora was firm. She checked the ready hands of 
the juveniles. " Children should not be encouraged 
to pursue this wretched life. We should give only 
to blind men, because here**s a great and evident 
affliction ; and to old women, because they look so 
lonely about the boots." The exposition was so 
subtle and logical that it admitted no reply. The 
old women and the blind men shuffled away with 
their pennies, and we began to chaff the sturdy and 
rosy children. 

A Spanish beggar can bear anything but banter. 
He is a keen physiognomist, and selects his victims 
with unerring acumen. If you storm or scowl at 
him, he knows he is making you uncomfortable, and 
hangs on like a burr. But if you laugh at him, 
with good humor, he is disarmed. A friend of mine 
reduced to confusion one of the most unabashed 



198 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

mendicants in Castile by replying to his whining 
petition, politely and with a beaming smile, " No, 
thank you. I never eat them." The beggar is far 
from considering his employment a degrading one. 
It is recognized by the Church, and the obligation 
of this form of charity especially inculcated. The 
average Spaniard regards it as a sort of tax to be as 
readily satisfied as a toll-fee. He will often stop 
and give a beggar a cent, and wait for the change 
in maravedises. One day, at the railway station, a 
muscular rogue approached me and begged for alms. 
I offered him my sac-de-nuit to carry a block or 
two. He drew himself up proudly and said, " I 
beg your pardon, sir, I am no Gallician." 

An old woman came up with a basket on her 
arm. " Can it be possible in this far country," said 
La Sefiora, " or are these — yes, they are, deliberate 
peanuts." With a penny we bought unlimited 
quantities of this levelling edible, and with them 
the devoted adherence of the aged merchant. She 
immediately took charge of our education. We 
must see Santa Maria la Blanca, — it was a beautiful 
thing ; so was the Transito. Did we see those men 
and women grubbing in the hillside ? They were 
digging bones to sell at the station. Where did the 
bones come from ? Quien sale ? Those dust-heaps 
have been there since King Wamba. Come, we 
must go and see the Churches of Mary before it 
grew dark. And the zealous old creature marched 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 199 

away with us to the synagogue built by Samuel 
Ben Levi, treasurer to that crowned panther, Peter 
the Cruel. This able financier built this fine temple 
to the God of his fathers out of his own purse. He 
was murdered for his money by his ungrateful lord, 
and his synagogue stolen by the Church. It now 
belongs to the order of Calatrava. 

But the other and older synagogue, now called 
Santa Maria la Blanca, is much more interesting. 
It stands in the same quarter, the suburb formerly 
occupied by the industrious and thriving Hebrews 
of the Middle Ages until the stupid zeal of the 
Catholic kings drove them out of Spain. The 
synagogue was built in the ninth century under 
the enlightened domination of the Moors. At the 
slaughter of the Jews in 1405 it became a church. 
It has passed through varying fortunes since then, 
having been hospital, hermitage, stable, and ware- 
house ; but it is now under the care of the provin- 
cial committee of art, and is somewhat decently re- 
stored. Its architecture is altogether Moorish. It 
has three aisles with thick octagonal columns sup- 
porting heavy horse-shoe arches. The spandrels are 
curiously adorned with rich circular stucco figures. 
The soil you tread is sacred, for it was brought from 
Zion long before the Crusades, and the cedar rafters 
above you preserve the memory and the odors of 
Lebanon. 

A little further west, on a fine hill overlooking 



200 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

the river, in the midst of the ruined palaces of the 
early kings, stands the beautiful votive church of 
San Juan de los Keyes. It was built by Ferdinand 
and Isabella, before the Columbus days, to com- 
memorate a victory over their neighbors the Portu- 
guese. During a prolonged absence of the king, 
the pious queen, wishing to prepare him a pleasant 
surprise, instead of embroidering a pair of imprac- 
ticable slippers as a faithful young wife would do 
nowadays, finished this exquisite church by setting 
at work upon it some regiments of stone-cutters and 
builders. It is not difficult to imagine the beauty 
of the structure that greeted the king on his wel- 
come home. For even now, after the storms of four 
centuries have beaten upon it, and the malignant 
hands of invading armies have used their utmost 
malice against it, it is still a wondrously perfect 
work of the Gothic inspiration. 

We sat on the terrace benches to enjoy the light 
and graceful lines of the building, the delicately 
ornate door, the unique drapery of iron chains 
wdiich the freed Christians hung here when de- 
livered from the hands of the Moors. A lovely 
child, with pensive blue eyes fringed with long 
lashes, and the slow sweet smile of a Madonna, sat 
near us and sang to a soft, monotonous air a war 
song of the Carlists. Her beauty soon attracted 
the artistic eyes of La Sefiora, and we learned she 
was named Francisca, and her baby brother, whose 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 201 

flaxen head lay heavily on her shoulder, was called 
Jesus Mary. She asked, Would we like to go in the 
church ? She knew the sacristan and would go for 
him. She ran away like a fawn, the tow head of 
little Jesus tumbling dangerously about. She re- 
appeared in a moment ; she had disposed of mi nino, 
as she called it, and had found the sacristan. This 
personage was rather disappointing. A sacristan 
should be aged and mouldy, clothed in black of a 
decent shabbiness. This was a Toledan swell in a 
velvet shooting-jacket and yellow peg-top trousers. 
However, he had the wit to confine himself to turn- 
ing keys, and so we gradually recovered from the 
shock of the shooting-jacket. 

The church forms one great nave, divided into 
four vaults enriched with wonderful stone lace- 
work. A superb frieze surrounds the entire nave, 
bearing in great Gothic letters an inscription nar- 
rating the foundation of the church. Everywhere 
the arms of Castile and Arragon, and the wedded 
ciphers of the Catholic kings. Statues of heralds 
start unexpectedly out from the face of the pillars. 
Fine as the church is, we cannot linger here long. 
The glory of San Juan is its cloisters. It may 
challenge the world to show anything so fine in 
the latest bloom and last development of Gothic 
art. One of the galleries is in ruins, — a sad wit- 
ness of the brutality of armies. But the three 
others are enough to show how much of beauty 
9* 



202 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

was possible in that final age of pure Gothic build- 
ing. The arches bear a double garland of leaves, 
of flowers, and of fruits, and among them are ramp- 
ing and writhing and playing every figure of bird 
or beast or monster that man has seen or poet 
imagined. There are no two arches alike, and yet 
a most beautiful harmony pervades them all. In 
some the leaves are in profile, in others delicately 
spread upon the graceful columns and every vein 
displayed. I saw one window where a stone mon- 
key sat reading his prayers, gowned and cowled, — 
an odd caprice of the tired sculptor. There is in 
this infinite variety of detail a delight that ends in 
something like fatigue. You cannot help feeling 
that this was naturally and logically the end of 
Gothic art. It had run its course. There was 
nothing left but this feverish quest of variety. It 
was in danger, after having gained such divine 
heights of invention, of degenerating into pretti- 
nesses and affectation. "" 

But how marvellously fine it was at last ! One 
must see it, as in these unequalled cloisters, half 
ruined, silent, and deserted, bearing with something 
of conscious dignity the blows of time and the 
ruder wrongs of men, to appreciate fully its proud 
superiority to all the accidents of changing taste 
and modified culture. It is only the truest art that 
can bear that test. The fanes of Psestum will al- 
ways be more beautiful even than the magical shore 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 203 

on which they stand. The Parthenon, fixed like a 
battered coronet on the brow of the Acropolis, will 
always be the loveliest sight that Greece can offer 
to those who come sailing in from the blue iEgean. It 
is scarcely possible to imagine a condition of thought 
or feeling in which these master-works shall seem 
quaint or old-fashioned. They appeal, now and al- 
ways, with that calm power of perfection, to the 
heart and eyes of every man born of woman. 

The cloisters enclose a little garden just enough 
neglected to allow the lush dark ivy, the passion- 
flowers, and the spreading oleanders to do their 
best in beautifying the place, as men have done 
their worst in marring it. The clambering vines 
seem trying to hide the scars of their hardly less 
perfect copies. Every arch is adorned with a soft 
and delicious drapery of leaves and tendrils ; the 
fair and outraged child of art is cherished and 
caressed by the gracious and bountiful hands of 
Mother Nature. 

As we came away, little Francisca plucked one 
of the five-pointed leaves of the passion-flowers 
and gave it to La Senora, saying reverentially, 
* This is the Hand of Our Blessed Lord ! " 

The sun was throned, red as a bacchanal king, 
upon the purple hills, as we descended the rocky 
declivity and crossed the bridge of St. Martin. Our 
little Toledan maid came with us, talking and sing- 
ing incessantly, like a sweet-voiced starling. We 



204 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

rested on the further side and looked back at the 
towering city, glorious in the sunset, its spires 
aflame, its long lines of palace and convent clear 
in the level rays, its ruins softened in the gathering 
shadows, the lofty bridge hanging transfigured over 
the glowing river. Before us the crumbling Avails 
and turrets of the Gothic kings ran down from the 
bluff to the water-side, its terrace overlooking the 
baths where, for his woe, Don Roderick saw Count 
Julian's daughter under the same inflammatory cir- 
cumstances as those in which, from a Judaean house- 
top, Don David beheld Captain Uriah's wife. There 
is a great deal of human nature abroad in the 
world in all ages. 

Little Francisca kept on chattering. " That is 
St. Martin's bridge. A girl jumped into the water 
last year. She was not a lady. She was in ser- 
vice. She was tired of living because she was in 
love. They found her three weeks afterwards ; but, 
Santissima Maria ! she was good for nothing then." 

Our little maid was too young to have sympathy 
for kings or servant girls who die for love. She 
was a pretty picture as she sat there, her blue eyes 
and Madonna face turned to the rosy west, singing 
in her sweet child's voice her fierce little song of 
sedition and war : — 

Arriba los valientes ! 
Abajo tirania ! 
Pronto llegara el dia 
•-. De la Eestauracion. 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 205 

Carlistas a caballo ! 
Soldados en Campaiia ! 
Viva el Eey de Espana, 

Don Carlos de Borbon ! 

I cannot enumerate the churches of Toledo, — 
you find them in every street and by-way. In the 
palmy days of the absolute Theocracy this narrow 
space contained more than a hundred churches and 
chapels. The province was gnawed by the cancer 
of sixteen monasteries of monks and twice as many 
convents of nuns, all crowded within these city 
walls. Fully one half the ground of the city was 
covered by religious buildings and mortmain prop- 
erty. In that age, when money meant ten times 
what it signifies now, the rent-roll of the Church in 
Toledo was forty millions of reals. There are even 
yet portions of the town where you find nothing 
but churches and convents. The grass grows green- 
ly in the silent streets. You hear nothing but the 
chime of bells and the faint echoes of masses. You 
see on every side bolted doors and barred windows, 
and, gliding over the mossy pavements, the stealthy- 
stepping, long-robed priests. 

I will only mention two more churches, and both 
of these converts from heathendom ; both of them 
dedicated to San Cristo, for in the democracy of the 
Calendar the Saviour is merely a saint, and reduced 
to the level of the rest. One is the old pretorian 
temple of the Romans, which was converted by 



206 CASTILIAN DAYS 

King Sizebuto into a Christian church in the seventh 
century. It is a curious structure in brick and 
mortar, with an absis and an odd arrangement of 
round arches sunken in the outer wall and still 
deeper pointed ones. It is famed as the resting- 
place of Saints Ildefonso and Leocadia, whom we 
have met before. The statue of the latter stands 
over the door graceful and pensive enough for a 
heathen muse. The little cloisters leading to the 
church are burial vaults. On one side lie the 
canonical dead and on the other the laity, with 
bright marble tablets and gilt inscriptions. In the 
court outside I noticed a flat stone marked Ossua- 
rium. The sacristan told me this covered the pit 
where the nameless dead reposed, and when the 
genteel people in the gilt marble vaults neglected 
to pay their annual rent, they were taken out and 
tumbled in to moulder with the common clay. 

This San Cristo de la Yega, St. Christ of the 
Plain, stands on the wide flat below the town, 
where you find the greater portion of the Eoman 
remains. Heaps of crumbling composite stretched 
in an oval form over the meadow mark the site of 
the great circus. Green turf and fields of waving 
grain occupy the ground where once a Latin city 
stood. The Eomans built on the plain. The Goths, 
following their instinct of isolation, fixed their 
dwelling on the steep and rugged rock. The rapid 
Tagus girdling the city like a horse-shoe left only 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 207 

the declivity to the west to be defended, and the 
ruins of King Wamba's wall show with what jeal- 
ous care that work was done. But the Moors, after 
they captured the city, apparently did little for its 
defence. A great suburb grew up in the course of 
ages outside the wall, and when the Christians re- 
captured Toledo in 1085, the first care of Alonso 
VI. was to build another wall, this time nearer the 
foot of the hill, taking inside all the accretion of 
these years. From that day to this that wall has 
held Toledo. The city has never reached, perhaps 
will never reach, the base of the steep rock on which 
it stands. 

"When King Alonso stormed the city, his first 
thought, in the busy half-hour that follows victory, 
was to find some convenient place to say his 
prayers. Chance led him to a beautiful little 
Moorish mosque or oratory near the superb Puerta 
del Sol. He entered, gave thanks, and hung up his 
shield as a votive offering. This is the Church of 
San Cristo de la Luz. The shield of Alonso hangs 
there defying time for eight centuries, — a golden 
cross on a red field, — and the exquisite oratory, not 
much larger than a child's toy-house, is to-day one 
of the most charming specimens of Moorish art in 
Spain. Four square pillars support the roof, which 
is divided into five equal " half-orange " domes, each 
different from the others and each equally fasci- 
nating in its unexpected simplicity and grace. You 



208 ' CASTILIAN DAYS. 

cannot avoid a feeling of personal kindliness and 
respect for the refined and genial spirit who left 
this elegant legacy to an alien race and a hostile 
creed. 

The Military College of Santa Cruz is one of the 
most precious specimens extant of those somewhat 
confused but beautiful results of the transition from 
florid Gothic to the Eenaissance. The plateresque 
is young and modest, and seeks to please in this 
splendid monument by allying the innovating forms 
with the traditions of a school outgrown. There is 
an exquisite and touching reminiscence of the 
Gothic in the superb portal and the matchless 
group of the Invention of the Cross. All this 
fine facade is by that true and genuine artist, 
Enrique de Egas, the same who carved the grand 
Gate of the Lions, for which may the gate of para- 
dise be open to him. 

The inner court is surrounded by two stories 
of airy arcades, supported by slim Corinthian 
columns. In one corner is the most elaborate stair- 
case in Spain. All the elegance and fancy of Arab 
and Renaissance art have been lavished upon this 
masterly work. 

Santa Cruz was built for a hospital by that 
haughty Cardinal Mendoza, the Tertius Rex of Fer- 
dinand and Isabella. It is now occupied by the 
military school, which receives six hundred cadets. 
They are under the charge of an Inspector-General 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 209 

and a numerous staff of professors. They pay forty 
cents a day for their board. The instruction is 
gratuitous and comprehends a curriculum almost 
identical with that of West Point. It occupies, 
however, only three years. 

The most considerable Renaissance structure in 
Toledo is the Eoyal Alcazar. It covers with its 
vast bulk the highest hill-top in the city. From 
the earliest antiquity this spot has been occupied by 
a royal palace or fortress. But the present struc- 
ture was built by Charles V. and completed by 
Herrera for Philip II. Its north and south facades 
are very fine. The Alcazar seems to have been 
marked by fate. The Portuguese burned it in the 
last century, and Charles III. restored it just in 
time for the French to destroy it anew. Its inde- 
structible walls alone remain. Now, after many 
years of ruinous neglect, the government has begun 
the work of restoration. The vast quadrangle is one 
mass of scaffolding and plaster dust. The grand 
staircase is almost finished again. In the course of 
a few years we may expect to see the Alcazar in a 
state worthy of its name and history. We would 
hope it might never again shelter a king. They have 
had their day there. Their line goes back so far 
into the mists of time that its beginning eludes our 
utmost search. The Roman drove out the unnamed 
chiefs of Iberia. The fair-haired Goth dispossessed 
the Italian. The Berber destroyed the Gothic 



210 CASTILTAN DAYS. 

monarchy. Castile and Leon fought their way 
down inch by inch through three centuries from 
Covadonga to Toledo, half-way in time and terri- 
tory to Granada and the Midland Sea. And since 
then how many royal feet have trodden this breezy 
crest, — Sanchos and Henrys and Ferdinands, — the 
line broken now and then by a usurping uncle or a 
fratricide brother, — a red-handed bastard of Trasta- 
mara, a star-gazing Alonso, a plotting and praying 
Charles, and, after Philip, the dwindling scions of 
Austria and the nullities of Bourbon. This height 
has known as well the rustle of the trailing robes 
of queens, — Berenguela, Isabel the Catholic, and 
Juana, — Crazy Jane. It was the prison of the widow 
of Philip IV. and mother of Charles II. "What 
wonder if her life left much to be desired ? With 
such a husband and such a son, she had no mem- 
ories nor hopes. 

The kings have had a long day here. They did 
some good in their time. But the world has out- 
grown them, and the people, here as elsewhere, is 
coming of age. This Alcazar is built more strongly 
than any dynasty. It will make a glorious school- 
house when the repairs are finished and the Re- 
public is established, and then may both last for- 
ever ! 

One morning at sunrise, I crossed the ancient 
bridge of Alcantara, and climbed the steep hill 
east of the river to the ruined castle of San Cer- 



THE CITY OF THE VISIGOTHS. 211 

vantes, perched on a high, bold rock, which guards 
the river and overlooks the valley. Near as it is to 
the city, it stands entirely alone. The instinct of 
aggregation is so powerful in this people that the 
old towns have no environs, no houses sprinkled in 
the outlying country, like modern cities. Every one 
must be huddled inside the walls. If a solitary 
house, like this castle, is built without, it must be 
in itself an impregnable fortress. This fine old 
ruin, in obedience to this instinct of jealous dis- 
trust, has but one entrance, and that so narrow that 
Sir John Falstaff would have been embarrassed to 
accept its hospitalities. In the shade of the broken 
walls, grass-grown and gay with scattered poppies, 
I looked at Toledo, fresh and clear in the early day. 
On the extreme right lay the new spick-and-span 
bull-ring, then the great hospice and Chapel of St. 
John the Baptist, the Convent of the Immaculate 
Conception, and next, the Latin cross of the Chapel 
of Santa Cruz, whose beautiful facade lay soft in 
shadow; the huge arrogant bulk of the Alcazar 
loomed squarely before me, hiding half the view ; 
to the left glittered the slender spire of the Cathe- 
dral, holding up in the pure air that emblem of 
august resignation, the triple crown of thorns ; then 
a crowd of cupolas, ending at last near the river- 
banks with the sharp angular mass of San Cristobal. 
The field of vision was filled with churches and 
chapels, with the palaces of the king and the monk. 



212 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Behind me the waste lands went rolling away un- 
tilled to the brown Toledo mountains. Below, the 
vigorous current of the Tagus brawled over its rocky 
bed, and the distant valley showed in its deep rich 
green what vitality there was in those waters if 
they were only used. 

A quiet, as of a plague-stricken city, lay on To- 
ledo. A few mules wound up the splendid roads 
with baskets of vegetables. A few listless fisher- 
men were preparing their lines. The chimes of 
sleepy bells floated softly out on the morning air. 
They seemed like the requiem of municipal life and 
activity slain centuries ago by the crozier and the 
crown. 

Thank Heaven, that double despotism is wounded 
to death. As Chesterfield predicted, before the first 
muttering of the thunders of '89, "the trades of 
king and priest have lost half their value." With 
the decay of this unrighteous power, the false, un- 
wholesome activity it fostered has also disappeared. 
There must be years of toil and leanness, years per- 
haps of struggle and misery, before the new genuine 
life of the people springs up from beneath the dead 
and withered rubbish of temporal and spiritual 
tyranny. Freedom is an angel whose blessing is 
gained by wrestling. 



THE ESCOEIAL. 213 



THE ESCOEIAL. 

The only battle in which Philip II. was ever 
engaged was that of St. Quentin, and the only part 
he took in that memorable fight was to listen to the 
thunder of the captains and the shouting afar off, 
and pray with great unction and fervor to various 
saints of his acquaintance and particularly to St. 
Lawrence of the Gridiron, who, being the celestial 
officer of the day, was supposed to have unlimited 
authority, and to whom he was therefore profuse 
in vows. While Egmont and his stout Flemings 
were capturing the Constable Montmorency and 
cutting his army in pieces, this young and chival- 
rous monarch was beating his breast and pattering 
his panic-stricken prayers. As soon as the victory 
was won, however, he lost his nervousness, and 
divided the entire credit of it between himself and 
his saints. He had his picture painted in full armor, 
as he appeared that day, and sent it to his doting 
spouse, Bloody Mary of England. He even thought 
he had gained glory enough, and while his father, 
the Emperor-Monk, was fiercely asking the messen- 
ger who brought the news of victory to Yuste, " Is 
my son at Paris ? " the prudent Philip was making 



214 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

a treaty of peace, by which his son Don Carlos was 
to marry the Princess Elizabeth of France. But 
Mary obligingly died at this moment, and the 
stricken widower thought he needed consolation 
more than his boy, and so married the pretty prin- 
cess himself. 

He always prided himself greatly on the battle 
of St. Quentin, and probably soon came to be- 
lieve he had done yeoman service there. The child- 
like credulity of the people is a great temptation to 
kings. It is very likely that after the coup-d'etat of 
December, the trembling puppet who had sat shiver- 
ing over his fire in the palace of the Elysees while 
Morny and Fleury and St. Arnaud and the rest of 
the cool gamblers were playing their last desperate 
stake on that fatal night, really persuaded himself 
that the work was his, and that he had saved soci- 
ety. That the fly should imagine he is moving the 
coach is natural enough ; but that the horses, and 
the wooden lumbering machine, and the passen- 
gers should take it for granted that the light gild- 
ed insect is carrying them all, — there is the true 
miracle. 

"We must confess to a special fancy for Philip TI. 
He was so true a king, so vain, so superstitious, so 
mean and cruel, it is probable so great a king never 
lived. Nothing could be more royal than the way 
he distributed his gratitude for the victory on St. 
Lawrence's day. To Count Egmont, whose splendid 



THE ESCORIAL. 215 

courage and loyalty gained him the battle, he gave 
ignominy and death on the scaffold ; and to exhibit 
a gratitude to a myth which he was too mean to 
feel to a man, he built to San Lorenzo that stupen- 
dous mass of granite which is to-day the visible 
demonstration of the might and the weakness of 
Philip and his age. 

He called it the Monastery of San Lorenzo el 
Eeal, but the nomenclature of the great has no 
authority with the people. It was built on a site 
once covered with cinder-heaps from a long aban- 
doned iron-mine, and so it was called in common 
speech the Escorial. The royal seat of San Ildefon- 
so can gain from the general no higher name than 
La Granja, the Farm. The great palace of Catha- 
rine de Medici, the home of three dynasties, is 
simply the Tuileries, the Tile-fields. You cannot 
make people call the White House the Executive 
Mansion. A merchant named Pitti built a pal- 
ace in Florence, and though kings and grand-dukes 
have inhabited it since, it is still the Pitti. There 
is nothing so democratic as language. You may 
alter a name by trick when force is unavailing. A 
noble lord in Segovia, following the custom of the 
good old times, once murdered a Jew, and stole his 
house. It was a pretty residence, but the skeleton 
in his closet was that the stupid commons would 
not call it anything but "the Jew's house." He 
killed a few of them for it, but that did not serve. 



216 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

At last, by advice of his confessor, lie had the fagade 
ornamented with projecting knobs of stucco, and the 
work was done. It is called to this day " the knobby 
house." 

The conscience of Philip did not permit a long 
delay in the accomplishment of his vow. Charles 
V. had charged him in his will to build a mauso- 
leum for the kings of the Austrian race. He bound 
the two obligations in one, and added a third desti- 
nation to the enormous pile he contemplated. It 
should be a palace as well as a monastery and a 
royal charnel-house. He chose the most appropriate 
spot in Spain for the erection of the most cheerless 
monument in existence. He had fixed his capital 
at Madrid because it was the dreariest town in 
Spain, and to envelop himself in a still profounder 
desolation, he built the Escorial out of sight of the 
city, on a bleak, bare hillside, swept by the glacial 
gales of the Guadarrama, parched by the vertical suns 
of summer, and cursed at all seasons with the curse 
of barrenness. Before it towers the great chain of 
mountains separating Old and New Castile. Behind 
it the chilled winds sweep down to the Madrid 
plateau, over rocky hillocks and involved ravines, — 
a scene in which probably no man ever took pleas- 
ure except the royal recluse who chose it for his 
home. 

John Baptist of Toledo laid the corner-stone on 
an April day of 1563, and in the autumn of 1584 



THE ESCOEIAL. 217 

John of Herrera looked upon the finished work, so 
vast and so gloomy that it lay like an incubus upon 
the breast of earth. It is a parallelogram measuring 
from north to south seven hundred and forty-four 
feet, and five hundred and eighty feet from east to 
west. It is built, by order of the fantastic bigot, in 
the form of St. Lawrence's gridiron, the courts rep- 
resenting the interstices of the bars, and the towers 
at the corners sticking helpless in the air like the 
legs of the supine implement. It is composed of a 
clean gray granite, chiefly in the Doric order, with 
a severity of facade that degenerates into poverty, 
and defrauds the building of the effect its great bulk 
merits. The sheer -monotonous walls are pierced 
with eleven thousand windows, which, though really 
large enough for the rooms, seem on that stupendous 
surface to shrink into musketry loop-holes. In the 
centre of the parallelogram stands the great church, 
surmounted by its soaring dome. All around the 
principal building is stretched a circumscribing 
line of convents, in the same style of doleful yel- 
lowish-gray uniformity, so endless in extent that 
the inmates might easily despair of any world be- 
yond them. 

There are few scenes in the world so depressing 
as that which greets you as you enter into the wide 
court before the church, called El Templo. You are 
shut finally in by these iron-gray walls. The out- 
side day has given you up. Your feet slip on the 
10 



218 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

damp flags. An unhealthy fungus tinges the humid 
corners with a pallid green. You look in vain for 
any trace of human sympathy in those blank walls 
and that severe faqade. There is a dismal attempt 
in that direction in the gilded garments and the 
painted faces of the colossal prophets and kings 
that are perched above the lofty doors. But they 
do not comfort you ; they are tinselled stones, not 
statues. 

Entering the vestibule of the church, and looking 
up, you observe with a sort of horror that the ceil- 
ing is of massive granite and flat. The sacristan 
has a story that when Philip saw this ceiling, which 
forms the floor of the high choir, he remonstrated 
against it as too audacious, and insisted on a strong 
pillar being built to support it. The architect com- 
plied, but when Philip came to see the improve- 
ment he burst into lamentation, as the enormous 
column destroyed the effect of the great altar. The 
canny architect, who had built the pillar of paste- 
board, removed it with a touch, and his Majesty was 
comforted. Walking forward to the edge of this 
shadowy vestibule, you recognize the skill and 
taste which presided at this unique and intelligent 
arrangement of the choir. If left, as usual, in the 
body of the church, it would have seriously im- 
paired that solemn and simple grandeur which dis- 
tinguishes this above all other temples. There is 
nothing to break the effect of the three great naves, 



THE ESCORIAL. 219 

divided by immense square-clustered columns, and 
surmounted by the vast dome that rises with all 
the easy majesty of a mountain more than three 
hundred feet from the decent black and white pave- 
ment. I know of nothing so simple and so im- 
posing as this royal chapel, built purely for the 
glory of God and with no thought of mercy or con- 
solation for human infirmity. The frescos of Luca 
Giordano show the attempt of a later and degenerate 
age to enliven with form and color the sombre dig- 
nity of this faultless pile. But there is something 
in the blue and vapory pictures which shows that 
even the unabashed Luca was not free from the im- 
pressive influence of the Escorial. 

A flight of veined marble steps leads to the beauti- 
ful retable of the high altar. The screen, over 
ninety feet high, cost the Milanese Trezzo seven 
years of labor. The pictures illustrative of the life 
of our Lord are by Tibaldi and Zuccaro. The gilt 
bronze tabernacle of Trezzo and Herrera, which has 
been likened with the doors of the Baptistery of 
Florence as worthy to figure in the architecture of 
heaven, no longer exists. It furnished a half-hour's 
amusement to the soldiers of France. On either 
side of the high altar are the oratories of the royal 
family, and above them are the kneeling effigies of 
Charles, with his wife, daughter, and sisters, and 
Philip with his successive harem of wives. One of 
the few luxuries this fierce bigot allowed himself 



220 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

was that of a new widowhood every few years. 
There are forty other altars with pictures good and 
bad. The best are by the wonderful deaf-mute, 
Navarrete, of Logrono, and by Sanchez Coello, the 
favorite of Philip. 

To the right of the high altar in the transept you 
will find, if your tastes, unlike Miss Eiderhood's, 
run in a bony direction, the most remarkable Eeli- 
quary in the world. With the exception perhaps 
of Cuvier, Philip could see more in a bone than 
any man who ever lived. In his long life of os- 
seous enthusiasm he collected seven thousand four 
hundred and twenty-one genuine relics, — whole 
skeletons, odd shins, teeth, toe-nails, and skulls of 
martyrs, — sometimes by a miracle of special grace 
getting duplicate skeletons of the same saint. The 
prime jewels of this royal collection are the grilled 
bones of San Lorenzo himself, bearing dim traces 
of his sacred gridiron. 

The sacristan will show you also the retable of the 
miraculous wafer, which bled when trampled on by 
Protestant heels at Gorcum in 1525. This has al- 
ways been one of the chief treasures of the Spanish 
crown. The devil-haunted idiot Charles II. made 
a sort of idol of it, building it this superb altar, 
consecrated "in this miracle of earth to the miracle 
of heaven." When the atheist Frenchmen sacked 
the Escorial and stripped it of silver and gold, the 
pious monks thought most of hiding this wonderful 



THE ESCORIAL. 221 

wafer, and when the storm passed by, the booby 
Ferdinand VII. restored it with much burning of 
candles, swinging of censers, and chiming of bells. 
"Worthless as it is, it has done one good work in 
the world. It inspired the altar-picture of Claudio 
Coello, the last best work of the last of the great 
school of Spanish painters. He finished it just be- 
fore he died of shame and grief at seeing Giordano, 
the nimble Neapolitan, emptying his buckets of 
paint on the ceiling of the grand staircase, where St. 
Lawrence and an army of martyrs go sailing with a 
fair wind into glory. 

The great days of art in the Escorial are gone. 
Once in every nook and corner it concealed treas- 
ures of beauty that the world had nearly forgotten. 
The Perla of Eaphael hung in the dark sacristy. 
The Cena of Titian dropped to pieces in the re- 
fectory. The Gloria, which had sunk into eclipse 
on the death of Charles V., was hidden here among 
unappreciative monks. But on the secularization 
of the monasteries, these superb canvases went to 
swell the riches of the Eoyal Museum. There are 
still enough left here, however, to vindicate the 
ancient fame of the collection. They are perhaps 
more impressive in their beauty and loneliness than 
if they were pranking among their kin in the 
glorious galleries and perfect light of that enchanted 
palace of Charles III. The inexhaustible old man 
of Cadora has the Prayer on Mount Olivet, an Ecce 



222 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Homo, an Adoration of the Magi. Velazquez one 
of his rare scriptural pieces, Jacob and his Chil- 
dren. Tintoretto is rather injured at the Museo by 
the number and importance of his pictures left in 
this monkish twilight; among them is a lovely 
Esther, and a masterly Presentation of Christ to 
the People. Plenty of Giordanos and Bassanos 
and one or two by El Greco, with his weird plague- 
stricken faces, all chalk and charcoal. 

A sense of duty will take you into the crypt 
where the dead kings are sleeping in brass. This 
mausoleum, ordered by the great Charles, was slow 
in finishing. All of his line had a hand in it down 
to Philip IV., who completed it and gathered in the 
poor relics of royal mortality from many graves. 
The key of the vault is the stone where the priest 
stands when he elevates the Host in the temple 
above. The vault is a graceful octagon about forty 
feet high, with nearly the same diameter; the 
flickering light of your torches shows twenty-six 
sarcophagi, some occupied and some empty, filling 
the niches of the polished marble. On the right 
sleep the sovereigns, on the left their consorts. 
There is a coffin for Dona Isabel de Bourbon among 
the kings, and one for her amiable and lady-like 
husband among the queens. They were not lovely 
in their lives, and in their deaths they shall be 
divided. The quaint old church-mouse who showed 
me the crypt called my attention to the coffin where 



THE ESCORIAL. 223 

Maria Louisa, wife of Charles IV., — the lady who 
so gallantly bestrides her war-horse, in the uniform 
of a colonel, in Goya's picture, — coming down 
those slippery steps with the sure footing of feverish 
insanity, a few days before her death, scratched 
Luisa with the point of her scissors and marked 
the sarcophagus for her own. All there was good 
of her is interred with her bones. Her frailties 
live on in scandalized history. 

Twice, it is said, the coffin of the Emperor has 
been opened by curious hands, — by Philip IV., who 
found the corpse of his great ancestor intact, and 
observed to the courtier at his elbow, "An honest 
body, Don Louis ! " and again by the Ministers of 
State and Fomento in the spring of 1870, who 
started back aghast when the coffin lid was lifted 
and disclosed the grim face of the Burgess of 
Ghent, just as Titian painted him, — the keen, 
bold face of a world-stealer. 

I do not know if Philip's funeral urn was ever 
opened. He stayed above ground too long as 
it was, and it is probable that people have never 
cared to look upon his face again. All that was 
human had died out of him years before his actual 
demise, and death seemed not to consider it worth 
while to carry off a vampire. Go into the little 
apartment where his last days were passed ; a 
wooden table and book-shelf, one arm-chair and 
two stools — the one upholstered with cloth for win- 



224 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

ter, the other with tin for summer — on which he 
rested his gouty leg, and a low chair for a secretary, 
— this was all the furniture he used. The rooms 
are not larger than cupboards, low and dark. The 
little oratory where he died looks out upon the high 
altar of the Temple. In a living death, as if by an 
awful anticipation of the common lot it was or- 
dained that in the flesh he should know corruption, 
he lay waiting his summons hourly for fifty-three 
days. What tremendous doubts and fears must 
have assailed him in that endless agony ! He had 
done more for the Church than any living man. He 
was the author of that sublime utterance of uncal- 
culating bigotry, " Better not reign than reign over 
heretics." He had pursued error with fire and 
sword. He had peopled limbo with myriads of 
rash thinkers. He had impoverished his kingdom 
in Catholic wars. Yet all this had not sufficed. He 
lay there like a leper smitten by the hand of the 
God he had so zealously served. Even in his mind 
there was no peace. He held in his clenched hand 
his father's crucifix, which Charles had held in his 
exultant death at Yuste. Yet in his waking hours 
he was never free from the horrible suggestion that 
he had not done enough for salvation. He would 
start in horror from a sleep that was peopled with 
shapes from torment. Humanity was avenged at 
last. 

So powerful is the influence of a great personal- 



THE ESCOEIAL. 225 

ity that in the Escorial you can think of no one 
but Philip II. He lived here only fourteen years, 
but every corridor and cloister seems to preserve 
the souvenir of his sombre and imperious genius. 
For two and a half centuries his feeble successors 
have trod these granite halls ; but they flit through 
your mind pale and unsubstantial as dreams. The 
only tradition they preserved of their great descent 
was their magnificence and their bigotry. There 
has never been one utterance of liberty or free 
thought inspired by this haunted ground. The 
king has always been absolute here, and the monk 
has been the conscience-keeper of the king. The 
whole life of the Escorial has been unwholesomely 
pervaded by a flavor of holy water and burial 
vaults. There was enough of the repressive in- 
fluence of that savage Spanish piety to spoil the 
freshness and vigor of a natural life, but not enough 
to lead the court and the courtiers to a moral walk 
and conversation. It was as profligate a court in 
reality, with all its masses and monks, as the gay 
and atheist circle of the Eegent of Orleans. Even 
Philip, the Inquisitor King, did not confine his 
royal favor to his series of wives. A more reckless 
and profligate young prodigal than Don Carlos, the 
hope of Spain and Eome, it would be hard to find 
to-day at Mabile or Cremorne. But he was a deeply 
reliqious lad for all that, and asked absolution from 
his confessors before attempting to put in practice 
10* o 



226 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

his intention of killing his father. Philip, fore- 
warned, shut him up until he died, in an edifying 
frame of mind, and then calmly superintended the 
funeral arrangements from a window of the palace. 
The same mingling of vice and superstition is seen 
in the lessening line down to our day. The last 
true king of the old school was Philip IV. Amid 
the ruins of his tumbling kingdom he lived royally 
here among his priests and his painters and his 
ladies. There was one jealous exigency of Spanish 
etiquette that made his favor fatal. The object of 
his adoration, when his errant fancy strayed to an- 
other, must go into a convent and nevermore be seen 
of lesser men. Madame Daunoy, who lodged at court, 
heard one night an august footstep in the hall and 
a kingly rap on the bolted door of a lady of honor. 
But we are happy to say she heard also the spirited 
reply from within, " May your Grace go with God ! 
I do not wish to be a nun ! " 

There is little in these frivolous lives that is worth 
knowing, — the long inglorious reigns of the dwin- 
dling Austrians and the parody of greater days 
played by the scions of Bourbon, relieved for a few 
creditable years by the heroic struggle of Charles 
III. against the hopeless decadence. You may walk 
for an hour through the dismal line of drawing- 
rooms in the cheerless palace that forms the grid- 
iron's handle, and not a spirit is evoked from 
memory among all the tapestry and panelling and 
gilding. 



THE ESCORIAL. 227 

The only cheerful room in this granite wilderness 
is the Library, still in good and careful keeping. A 
long, beautiful room, two hundred feet of bookcases, 
and tasteful frescos by Tibaldi and Carducho, rep- 
resenting the march of the liberal sciences. Most 
of the older folios are bound in vellum, with their 
gilded edges, on which the title is stamped, turned 
to the front. A precious collection of old books and 
older manuscripts, useless to the world as the hoard 
of a miser. Along the wall are hung the portraits 
of the Escorial kings and builders. The hall is 
furnished with marble and porphyry tables, and 
elaborate glass cases display some of the curiosities 
of the library, — a copy of the Gospels that be- 
longed to the Emperor Conrad, the Suabian Kurz ; 
a richly illuminated Apocalypse ; a gorgeous missal 
of Charles V. ; a Greek Bible, which once belonged 
to Mrs. Phcebus's ancestor Cantacuzene; Persian 
and Chinese sacred books ; and a Koran, which is 
said to be the one captured by Don Juan at Le- 
panto. Mr. Ford says it is spurious ; Mr. Madoz 
says it is genuine. The ladies with whom I had 
the happiness to visit the library inclined to the 
latter opinion for two very good reasons, — the book 
is a very pretty one, and Mr. Madoz's head is much 
balder than Mr. Ford's. 

Wandering aimlessly through the frescoed cloisters 
and looking in at all the open doors, over each of 
which a cunning little gridiron is inlaid in the 



228 CASTILIAN DAYS, 

wood-work, we heard the startling and unexpected 
sound of boyish voices and laughter. We ap- 
proached the scene of such agreeable tumult, and 
found the theatre of the monastery full of young 
students rehearsing a play for the coming holidays. 
A clever-looking priest was directing the drama, 
and one juvenile Thespis was denouncing tyrants 
and dying for his couiafry in hexameters of a shrill 
treble. His friends were applauding more than 
was necessary or kind, and flourishing their wooden 
swords with much ferocity of action. All that is 
left of the once extensive establishment of the 
monastery is a boys' school, where some two hun- 
dred youths are trained in the humanities, and a 
college where an almost equal number are educated 
for the priesthood. 

So depressing is the effect of the Escorial's gloom 
and its memories, that when you issue at last from 
its massive doors, the trim and terraced gardens 
seem gay and heartsome, and the bleak wild scene 
is full of comfort. For here at least there is li^ht 
and air and boundless space. You have emerged 
from the twilight of the past into the present day. 
The sky above you bends over Paris and Cheyenne. 
By this light Darwin is writing, and the merchants 
are meeting in the Chicago Board of Trade. Just 
below you winds the railway which will take you 
in two hours to Madrid, — to the city of Philip II., 
where the nineteenth century has arrived; where 



THE ESCORIAL. 229 

there are five Protestant churches and fifteen hun- 
dred Evangelical communicants. Our young cru- 
sader, Professor Knapp, holds night schools and day 
schools and prayer meetings, with an active devo- 
tion, a practical and American fervor, that is leaven- 
ing a great lump of apathy and death. These 
Anglo-Saxon missionaries have a larger and more 
tolerant spirit of propaganda than has been hitherto 
seen. They can differ about the best shape for the 
cup and the platter, but they use what they find to 
their hand. They are giving a tangible direction 
and purpose to the vague impulse of reform that 
was stirring before they came in many devout 
hearts. A little while longer of this state of free- 
dom and inquiry, and the shock of controversy will 
come, and Spain will be brought to life. 

Already the signs are full of promise. The ancient 
barriers of superstition have already given way in 
many places. A Protestant cannot only live in 
Spain, but, what was once a more important matter, 
he can die and be buried there. This is one of the 
conquests of the Revolution. So delicate has been 
the susceptibility of the Spanish mind in regard to 
the pollution of its soil by heretic corpses, that 
even Charles I. of England, when he came a-wooing 
to Spain, could hardly gain permission to bury his 
page by night in the garden of the Embassy ; and 
in later days the Prussian Minister was compelled 
to smuggle his dead child out of the kingdom 



230 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

among his luggage to give it Christian burial 
Even since the days of September the clergy has 
fought manfully against giving sepulture to Protes- 
tants ; but Kivero, Alcalde of Madrid and President 
of the Cortes, was not inclined to waste time in 
dialectics, and sent a police force to protect the 
heretic funerals and to arrest any priest who dis- 
turbed them. There is freedom of speech and 
printing. The humorous journals are full of blas- 
phemous caricatures that would be impossible out 
of a Catholic country, for superstition and blas- 
phemy always run in couples. It was the Duke de 
Guise, commanding the Pope's army at Civitella, 
who cried in his rage at a rain which favored Alva, 
"God has turned Spaniard"; like Quashee, who 
burns his Fetish when the weather is foul. The 
liberal Spanish papers overflowed with wit at the 
proclamation of Infallibility. They announced that 
his Holiness was now going into the lottery busi- 
ness with brilliant prospects of success ; that he 
could now tell what Father Manterola had done 
with the thirty thousand dollars' worth of Bulls he 
sold last year and punctually neglects to account 
for, and other levities of the sort, which seemed 
greatly relished, and which would have burned the 
facetious author two centuries before, and fined and 
imprisoned him before the fight at Alcolea. The 
Minister having charge of the public instruction 
has promised to present a law for the prohibition 



THE ESCOMAL. 231 

of dogmatic doctrine in the national schools. The 
law of civil registry and civil marriage, after a des- 
perate struggle in the Cortes, has gone into opera- 
tion with general assent. There is a large party 
which actively favors the entire separation of the 
spiritual from the temporal power, making religion 
voluntary and free, and breaking its long concu- 
binage with the Crown. The old superstition, it is 
true, still hangs like a malarial fog over Spain. But 
it is invaded by flashes and rays of progress. It 
cannot resist much longer the sunshine of this tol- 
erant age. 

Far up the mountain-side, in the shade of a cluster 
of chestnuts, is a rude block of stone, called the 
" King's Chair," where Philip used to sit in silent 
revery, watching as from an eyry the progress of 
the enormous work below. If you go there, you 
will see the same scene upon which his basilisk 
glance reposed, — in a changed world, the same un- 
changing scene, — the stricken waste, the shaggy 
horror of the mountains, the fixed plain wrinkled 
like a frozen sea, and in the centre of the perfect 
picture the vast chill bulk of that granite pile, ris- 
ing cold, colorless, and stupendous, as if carved from 
an iceberg by the hand of Northern gnomes. It is 
the palace of vanished royalty, the temple of a re- 
ligion which is dead. There are kings and priests 
still, and will be for many coming years. But never 
again can a power exist which shall rear to the glory 



232 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

of the sceptre and the cowl a monument like this. 
It is a page of history deserving to be well pon- 
dered, for it never will be repeated. The world 
which Philip ruled from the foot of the Guadarrama 
has passed away. A new heaven and a new earth 
came in with the thunders of 1776 and 1789. There 
will be no more Pyramids, no more Versailles, no 
more Escorials. The unpublished fiat has gone 
forth that man is worth more than the glory of 
princes. The better religion of the future has no 
need of these massive dungeon-temples of super- 
stition and fear. Yet there is a store of precious 
teachings in this mass of stone. It is one of the 
results of that mysterious law to which the genius 
of history has subjected the caprices of kings, to the 
end that we might not be left without a witness of 
the past for our warning and example, — the law 
which induces a judged and sentenced dynasty to 
build for posterity some monument of its power, 
which hastens and commemorates its ruin. By 
virtue of this law we read on the plains of Egypt 
the pride and the fall of the Pharaohs. Before the 
fagade of Versailles we see at a glance the grandeur 
of the Capetian kings and the necessity of the Kev- 
olution. And the most vivid picture of that fierce 
and gloomy religion of the sixteenth century, com- 
pounded of a base alloy of worship for an absolute 
king and a vengeful God, is to be found in this 
colossal hermitage in the flinty heart of the moun- 
tains of Castile. 



A MIEACLE PLAY. 233 



A MIEACLE PLAY. 

In the windy month of March a sudden gloom 
falls upon Madrid, — the reaction after the folle 
gaiete of the Carnival. The theatres are at their 
gayest in February until Prince Carnival and his 
jolly train assault the town, and convert the tem- 
ples of the drama into ball-rooms. They have not 
yet arrived at the wonderful expedition and despatch 
observed in Paris, where a half-hour is enough to 
convert the Grand Opera into the Masked Ball. 
The invention of this process of flooring the or- 
chestra flush with the stage and making a vast 
dancing-hall out of both is due to an ingenious 
courtier of the Eegency, bearing the great name of 
De Bouillon, who got much credit and a pension by 
it. In Madrid they take the afternoon leisurely to 
the transformation, and the evening's performance 
is of course sacrificed. So the sock and buskin, not 
being adapted to the Cancan, yielded with Febru- 
ary, and the theatres were closed finally on Ash 
Wednesday. 

Going by the pleasant little Theatre of Lope de 
Ptueda, in the Calle Barquillo, I saw the office-doors 
open, the posters up, and an unmistakable air of 



234 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

animation among the loungers who mark with a 
seal so peculiar the entrance of places of amusement. 
Struck by this apparent levity in the midst of the 
general mortification, I went over to look at the bills 
and found the subject announced serious enough for 
the most Lenten entertainment, — Los Siete Dolores 
de Maria, — The Seven Sorrows of Mary, — the 
old mediaeval Miracle of the Life of the Saviour. 

This was bringing suddenly home to me the fact 
that I was really in a Catholic country. I had 
never thought of going to Ammergau, and so, when 
reading of these shows, I had entertained no more 
hope of seeing one than of assisting at an auto-da- 
fe or a witch-burning. I went to the box-office to 
buy seats. But they were all sold. The forestalled 
had swept the board. I was never able to deter- 
mine whether I most pitied or despised these pests 
of the theatre. Whenever a popular play is pre- 
sented, a dozen ragged and garlic-odorous vagabonds 
go early in the day and buy as many of the best 
places as they can pay for. They hang about the 
door of the theatre all day, and generally manage to 
dispose of their purchases at an advance. But it 
happens very often that they are disappointed ; that 
the play does not draw, or that the evening threatens 
rain, and the Spaniard is devoted to his hat. He 
would keep out of a revolution if it rained. So 
that, at the pleasant hour when the orchestra are 
giving the last tweak to the key of their fiddles, 



A MIRACLE PLAY. 235 

you may see these woe-begone wretches rushing 
distractedly from the Piamonte to the Alcala, offer- 
ing their tickets at a price which falls rapidly from 
double to even, and tumbles headlong to half-price 
at the first note of the opening overture. When I 
see the forestaller luxuriously basking at the office- 
door in the warm sunshine, and scornfully re- 
fusing to treat for less than twice the treasurer's 
figures, I feel a divided indignation against the 
nuisance and the management that permits it. But 
when in the evening I meet him haggard and fever- 
ish, hawking his unsold places in desperate panic 
on the sidewalk, I cannot but remember that prob- 
ably a half-dozen dirty and tawny descendants of 
Pelayo will eat no beans to-morrow for those un- 
fortunate tickets, and my wrath melts, and I buy 
his crumpled papers, moist with the sweat of anx- 
iety, and add a slight propina, which I fear will be 
spent in Aguardiente to calm his shattered nerves. 

This day the sky looked threatening, and my 
shabby hidalgo listened to reason, and sold me my 
places at their price and a petit verve. 

As we entered in the evening the play had just 
begun. The scene was the interior of the Temple 
at Jerusalem, rather well done, — two ranges of 
superimposed porphyry columns with a good effect 
of oblique perspective, which is very common in 
the Spanish theatres. St. Simeon, in a dress sus- 
piciously resembling that of the modern bishop, 



236 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

was talking with a fiery young Hebrew who turns 
out to be Demas, the Penitent Thief, and who is 
destined to play a very noticeable part in the even- 
ing's entertainment. He has received some slight 
from the government authorities and does not pro- 
pose to submit to it. The aged and cooler-blooded 
Simeon advises him to do nothing rash. Here at 
the very outset is a most characteristic Spanish 
touch. You are expected to be interested in Demas, 
and the only crime which could appeal to the sym- 
pathies of a Castilian crowd would be one com- 
mitted at the promptings of injured dignity. 

There is a soft, gentle strain of music played 
pianissimo by the orchestra, and, surrounded by a 
chorus of mothers and maidens, the Virgin Mother 
enters with the Divine Child in her arms. The Ma- 
donna is a strapping young girl named Gutierrez, a 
very clever actress ; and the Child has been bought in 
the neighboring toy-shop, a most palpable and cynical 
wax-doll. The doll is handed to Simeon, and the 
solemn ceremony of the Presentation is performed 
to fine and thoughtful music. St. Joseph has come 
in sheepishly by the flies with his inseparable staff 
crowned with a garland of lilies, which remain mi- 
raculously fresh during thirty years or so, and kneels 
at the altar, on the side opposite to Miss Gutierrez. 

As the music ceases, Simeon starts as from a 
trance and predicts in a few rapid couplets the suf- 
ferings and the crucifixion of the child. Mary falls 

v 



A MIRACLE PLAY. 237 

overwhelmed in the arms of her attendants, and 
Simeon exclaims, " Most blessed and most unfortu- 
nate among women ! thy heart is to be pierced with 
Seven Sorrows, and this is the first." Demas rushes 
in and announces the massacre of the innocents, 
concluding with the appropriate reflection, " Perish 
the kings ! always the murderers of the people." 
This sentiment is so much to the taste of the 
gamins of the Paraiso that they vociferously de- 
mand an encore ; but the Eoman soldiers come in 
and commence the pleasing task of prodding the 
dolls in the arms of the chorus. 

The next Act is the Flight into Egypt. The 
curtain rises on a rocky ravine with a tinsel tor- 
rent in the background and a group of robbers on the 
stage. Gestas, the Impenitent Thief, stands sulky 
and glum in a corner, fingering his dagger as you 
might be sure he would, and informing himself in 
a growling soliloquy that his heart is consumed 
with envy and hate because he is not captain. The 
captain, one Issachar, comes in, a superbly hand- 
some young fellow, named Mario, to my thinking 
the first comedian in Spain, dressed in a flashy suit 
of leopard hides, and announces the arrival of a 
stranger. Enters Demas, who says he hates the 
world and would fain drink its foul blood. He is 
made politely welcome. No ! he will be captain or 
nothing. Issachar laughs scornfully and says he is 
in the way of that modest aspiration. But Demas 



238 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

speedily puts him out of the way with an Albacete 
knife, and becomes captain, to the profound dis- 
gust of the impenitent Gestas, who exclaims, just 
as the profane villains do nowadays on every well- 
conducted stage, " Damnation ! foiled again ! " 

The robbers pick up their idolized leader and 
pitch him into the tinsel torrent. This is also ex- 
tremely satisfactory to the wide-awake young Arabs 
of the cock-loft. The bandits disperse, and Demas 
indulges in some fifty lines of rhymed reflections, 
which are interrupted by the approach of the Holy 
Family, hotly pursued by the soldiery of Herod. 
They stop under a sycamore tree, which instantly, 
by very clever machinery, bends down its spreading 
branches and miraculously hides them from the 
bloodthirsty legionaries. These pass on, and Demas 
leads the saintly Trio by a secret pass over the tor- 
rent, — the Mother and Child mounted upon an 
ass and St. Joseph trudging on behind with his lily- 
decked staff, looking all as if they were on a short 
leave of absence from Correggio's picture-frame. 

Demas comes back, calls up his merrymen, and 
has a battle-royal with the enraged legionaries, which 
puts the critics of the gallery into a frenzy of de- 
light and assures the success of the spectacle. The 
curtain falls in a gust of applause, is stormed up 
again, Demas comes forward and makes a neat 
speech, announcing the author. Que saiga 1 roar 
the gods, — " Trot him out ! " A shabby young 



A MIRACLE PLAY. 239 

cripple hobbles to tlie front, leaning upon a crutch, 
his sallow face flushed with a hectic glow of pride 
and pleasure. He also makes a glib speech, — I 
have never seen a Spaniard who could not, — dis- 
claiming all credit for himself, but lauding the 
sublimity of the acting and the perfection of the 
scene-painting, and saying that the memory of this 
unmerited applause will be forever engraved upon 
his humble heart. 

Act Third, the Lost Child, or Christ in the Tem- 
ple. The scene is before the Temple on a festival 
day, plenty of chorus-girls, music, and flowers. 
Demas and the impenitent Gestas and Barrabas, 
who, I was pleased to see, was after all a very good 
sort of fellow, with no more malice than you or I, 
were down in the city on a sort of lark, their leop- 
ard skins left in the mountains and their daggers 
hid under the natty costume of the Judaean dandy 
of the period. Demas and Gestas have a quarrel, 
in which Gestas is rather roughly handled, and goes 
off growling like every villain, qui se respecte, — "I 
will have r-revenge." Barrabas proposes to go 
around to the cider-cellars, but Demas confides to 
him that he is enslaved by a dream of a child, 
who said to him, " Follow me — to Paradise " ; that 
he had come down to Jerusalem to seek and find 
the mysterious infant of his vision. The jovial 
Barrabas seems imperfectly impressed by these 
transcendental fancies, and at this moment Mary 



240 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

comes in dressed like a Madonna of Guido Eeni, 
and soon after St. Joseph and his staff. They ask 
each other where is the Child, — a scene of alarm and 
bustle, which ends by the door of the Temple fly- 
ing open and discovering, shrined in ineffable light, 
Jesus teaching the Doctors. 

In the Fourth Act, Demas meets a beautiful 
woman by the city gate, in the loose, graceful dress 
of the Hetairai, and the most wonderful luxuriance 
of black curls I have ever seen falling in dense 
masses to her knees. After a conversation of 
amorous banter, he gives her a golden chain, which 
she assumes, well pleased, and gives him her name, 
La Magdalena. A motley crowd of street loafers 
here rushed upon the scene, and I am sure there 
w T as no one of Northern blood in the theatre that 
did not shudder for an instant at the startling ap- 
parition that formed the central figure of the group. 
The world has long ago agreed upon a typical face 
and figure for the Saviour of men ; it has been re- 
peated on myriads of canvases and reproduced in 
thousands of statues, till there is scarcely a man 
living that does not have the same image of the 
Eedeemer in his mind. Well, that image walked 
quietly upon the stage, so perfect in make-up that 
you longed for some error to break the terrible vrai- 
semUance. I was really relieved when the august 
appearance spoke, and I recognized the voice of a 
young actor named Morales, a clever light comedian 
of the Bressant type. 



A MIRACLE PLAY. 241 

The Magdalene is soon converted by the preach- 
ing of the Nazarene Prophet, and the scene closes 
by the triumphant entry into Jerusalem amid the 
waving of palm-branches, the strewing of flowers, 
and " sonorous metal blowing martial sounds." The 
pathetic and sublime lament, " Jerusalem ! Jeru- 
salem! thou that killest the prophets !" was de- 
livered with great feeling and power. 

The next Act brings us before the Judgment-Seat 
of Pontius Pilate. This act is almost solely hor- 
rible. The Magdalene in her garb of penitence 
comes in to beg the release of Jesus of Nazareth. 
Pontius, who is represented as a gallant old gentle- 
man, says he can refuse nothing to a lady. The 
prisoner is dragged in by two ferocious ruffians, who 
beat and buffet him with absurd and exaggerated 
violence. There is nothing more hideous than the 
awful concreteness of this show, — the naked help- 
lessness of the prisoner, his horrible, cringing, over- 
done humility, the coarse kicking and cuffing of the 
deputy-sheriffs. The Prophet is stripped and 
scourged- at the Pillar until he drops from ex- 
haustion. He is dragged anew before Pilate and 
examined, but his only word is, " Thou hast said." 
The scene lasts nearly an hour. The theatre was 
full of sobbing women and children. At every 
fresh brutality I could hear the weeping spectators 
say, " Pobre Jesus ! " " How wicked they are ! " 
The bulk of the audience was of people who do not 
11 p 



242 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

often go to theatres. They looked upon the revolt- 
ing scene as a real and living fact. One hard- 
featured man near me clenched his fists and cursed 
the cruel guards. A pale, delicate-featured girl 
who was leaning out of her box with her brown 
eyes, dilated with horror, fixed upon the scene, sud- 
denly shrieked as a Eoman soldier struck the un- 
resisting Saviour, and fell back fainting in the arms 
of her friends. 

The ISTazarene Prophet was condemned at last. 
Gestas gives evidence against him, and also delivers 
Demas to the law, but is himself denounced, and 
shares their sentence. The crowd howled with 
exultation, and Pilate washed his hands in im- 
potent rage and remorse. The curtain came down 
leaving the uncultivated portion of the audience in 
the frame of mind in which their ancestors a few 
centuries earlier would have gone from the theatre 
determined to serve God and relieve their feelings 
by killing the first Jew they could find. The 
diversion was all the better, because safer, if they 
happened to the good luck of meeting a Hebrew 
woman or child. 

The Calle de Amargura — the Street of Bitterness 
— was the next scene. First came a long procession 
of official Romans, — lictors and swordsmen, and 
the heralds announcing the day's business. Demas 
appears, dragged along with vicious jerks to execu- 
tion. The Saviour follows, and falls under the 






A MIRACLE PLAY. 243 

weight of the cross before the footlights. Another 
long and dreary scene takes place, of brutalities 
from the Eoman soldiers, the ringleader of whom 
is a sanguinary Andalusian ingeniously encased in 
a tin barrel, a hundred lines of rhymed sorrow from 
the Madonna, and a most curious scene of the Wan- 
dering Jew. This worthy, who in defiance of tra- 
dition is called Samuel, is sitting in his doorway 
watching the show, when the suffering Christ begs 
permission to rest a moment on his threshold. He 
says churlishly, Anda ! — " Begone ! " "I will go, 
but thou shalt go forever until I come." The Jew's 
feet begin to twitch convulsively, as if pulled from 
under him. He struggles for a moment, and at last 
is carried off by his legs, which are moved like 
those of the walking dolls with the Greek names. 
This odd tradition, so utterly in contradiction with 
the picture the Scriptures give us of the meek dig- 
nity with which the Eedeemer forgave all personal 
injuries, has taken a singular hold upon the imagi- 
nations of all peoples. Under varying names, — 
Ahasuerus, Salathiel, le Juif Errant, der ewige Jude, 
— his story is the delight and edification of many 
lands ; and I have met some worthy people who 
stoutly insisted that they had read it in the 
Bible. 

The sinister procession moves on. The audience 
which had been somewhat cheered by the prompt 
and picturesque punishment inflicted upon the inhos- 



244 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

pitable Samuel, was still further exhilarated by the 
spectacle of the impenitent traitor Gestas, stagger- 
ing under an enormous cross, his eyes and teeth 
glaring with abject fear, with an athletic Koinan 
haling him up to Calvary with a new hempen 
halter. 

A long intermission followed, devoted to putting 
babies to sleep, — for there were hundreds of them, 
wide-eyed and strong-lunged, — to smoking the hasty 
cigarette, to discussing the next combination of 
Prim or the last scandal in the gay world. The 
carpenters were busy behind the scenes building the 
mountain. When the curtain rose, it was worth 
waiting for. It was an admirable scene. A gen- 
uine Spanish mountain, great humpy undulations 
of rock and sand, gigantic cacti for all vegetation, a 
lurid sky behind, but not over-colored. A group of 
Bo man soldiers in the foreground, in the rear the 
hill, and the executioners busily employed in nail- 
ing the three victims to their crosses. Demas was 
fastened first ; then Gestas, who, when undressed for 
execution, was a superb model of a youthful Her- 
cules. But the third cross still lay on the ground ; 
the hammering and disputing and coming and going 
were horribly lifelike and real. 

At last the victim is securely nailed to the wood, 
and the cross is slowly and clumsily lifted and falls 
with a shock into its socket. The soldiers huzza, 
the fiend in the tin barrel and another in a tin hat 



A MIRACLE PLAY. 245 

come down to the foot-lights and throw dice for the 
raiment. " Caramba ! curse my luck ! " says our 
friend in the tin case, and the other walks off with 
the vestment. 

The Passion begins, and lasts an interminable 
time. The grouping is admirable, every shifting of 
the crowd in the foreground produces a new and 
finished picture, with always the same background 
of the three high crosses and their agonizing bur- 
dens against that lurid sky. The impenitent Gestas 
curses and dies ; the penitent Demas believes and 
receives eternal rest. The Holy Women come in 
and group themselves in picturesque despair at the 
foot of the cross. The awful drama goes on with 
no detail omitted, — the thirst, the sponge dipped 
in vinegar, the cry of desolation, the spear-thrust, 
the giving up of the ghost. The stage-lights are 
lowered. A thick darkness — of crape — comes 
down over the sky. Horror falls on the impious 
multitude, and the scene is deserted save by the 
faithful 

The closing act opens with a fine effect of moon 
and stars. " Que linda luna ! " sighed a young 
woman beside me, drying her tears, comforted by 
the beauty of the scene. The central cross is bathed 
in the full splendor that is denied the others. Joseph 
of Abarimathea (as he is here called) comes in with 
ladders and winding-sheets, and the dead Christ is 
taken from the cross. The Descent is managed with 



246 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

singular skill and genuine artistic feeling. The 
principal actor, who has been suspended for an hour 
in a most painful and constrained posture, has a 
corpse-like rigidity and numbness. There is one 
moment when you can almost imagine yourself in 
Antwerp, looking at that sublimest work of Eubens. 
The Entombment ends, and the last tableau is of the 
Mater Dolorosa in the Solitude. I have rarely seen 
an effect so simple, and yet so striking, — the dark- 
ened stage, the softened moonlight, the now Holy 
Eood spectral and tall against the starry sky ; and 
the Dolorous Mother, alone in her sublime sorrow, 
as she will be worshipped and revered for coming 
aeons. 

flF t(c t& 3|r 5p 

A curious observation is made by all foreigners, 
of the absence of the Apostles from the drama. 
They appear from time to time, but merely as super- 
numeraries. One would think that the character 
of Judas was especially fitted for dramatic use. I 
spoke of this to a friend, and he said that formerly 
the false Apostle was introduced in the play, but that 
the sight of him so fired the Spanish heart that not 
only his life, but the success of the piece was endan- 
gered. This reminds one of Mr. A. Ward's account 
of a high-handed outrage at " Utiky," where a young 
gentleman of good family stove in the wax head of 
" Jewdas Iscarrit," characterizing him at the same 
time as a " pewserlanimous cuss." 



A MIRACLE PLAY. 247 

" To see these Mysteries in their glory," continued 
my friend, " you should go into the small towns in 
the provinces, un contaminated with railroads or 
unbelief. There they last several days. The stage 
is the town, the Temple scene takes place in the 
church, the Judgment at the city hall, and the pro- 
cession of the Via Crucis moves through all the 
principal streets. The leading roles are no joke, — 
carrying fifty kilos of wood over the mud and cob- 
ble-stones for half a day. The Judas or Gestas must 
be paid double for the kicks and cuffs he gets from 
tender-hearted spectators, — the curses he accepts 
willingly as a tribute to his dramatic ability. His 
proudest boast in the evening is Querian matarme, 
• — ' They wanted to kill me ! ' I once saw the hero 
of the drama stop before a wine-shop, sweating like 
rain, and positively swear by the life of the Devil, 
he would not carry his gallows a step farther unless 
he had a drink. They brought him a bottle of 
Valdepeiias, and he drained it before resuming his 
way to Golgotha. Some of us laughed thoughtlessly, 
and narrowly escaped the knives of the orthodox 
ruffians who followed the procession." 

The most striking fact in this species of exhibi- 
tion is the evident and unquestioning faith of the 
audience. To all foreigners the show is at first 
shocking and then tedious ; to the good people of 
Madrid it is a sermon, full of absolute truth and 
vivid reality. The class of persons who attend 



248 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

these spectacles is very different from that which 
you find at the Eoyal Theatre or the Comic Opera. 
They are sober, serious bourgeois, who mind their 
shops and go to mass regularly, and who come to 
the theatre only in Lent, when the gay world stays 
away. They would not dream of such an indiscre- 
tion as reading the Bible. Their doctrinal education 
consists of their catechism, the sermons of the 
curas, and the traditions of the Church. The 
miracle of St. Veronica, who, wiping the brow of 
the Saviour in the Street of Bitterness, finds his 
portrait on her handkerchief, is to them as real and 
reverend as if it were related by the Evangelist. 
The spirit of inquiry which has broken so many 
idols, and opened such new vistas of thought for 
the minds of all the world, is as yet a stranger to 
Spain. It is the blind and fatal boast of even the 
best of Spaniards, that their country is a unit in 
religious faith. Nunca se disputd en Uspana, — 
" There has never been any discussion in Spain," — 
exclaims proudly an eminent Spanish writer. 

Spectacles like that which we have just seen 
were one of the elements which in a barbarous and 
unenlightened age contributed strongly to the con- 
solidation of that unthinking and ardent faith which 
has fused the nation into one torpid and homogene- 
ous mass of superstition. No better means could 
have been devised for the purpose. Leaving out of 
view the sublime teachings of the large and toler- 



A MIRACLE PLAY. 249 

ant morality of Jesus, the clergy made his person- 
ality the sole object of worship and reverence. By 
dwelling almost exclusively upon the story of his 
sufferings, they excited the emotional nature of the 
ignorant, and left their intellects untouched and 
dormant. They aimed to arouse their sympathies, 
and when that was done, to turn their natural 
resentment against those whom the Church consid- 
ered dangerous. To the inflamed and excited wor- 
shippers, a heretic was the enemy of the crucified 
Saviour, a Jew was his murderer, a Moor was 
his reviler. A Protestant wore to their bloodshot 
eyes the semblance of the torturer who had mocked 
and scourged the meek Eedeemer, who had crowned 
his guileless head with thorns, who had pierced and 
slain him. The rack, the gibbet, and the stake 
were not enough to glut the pious hate this priestly 
trickery inspired. It was not enough that the 
doubter's life should go out in the blaze of the 
crackling fagots, but it must be loaded in eternity 
with the curses of the faithful. 

Is there not food for earnest thought in the fact 
that faith in Christ, which led the Puritans across 
the sea to found the purest social and political sys- 
tem which the wit of man has yet evolved from the 
tangled problems of time, has dragged this great 
Spanish people down to a depth of hopeless apathy, 
from which it may take long years of civil tumult 
to raise them ? May we not find the explanation 
11* 



250 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

of this strange phenomenon in the contrast of 
Catholic unity with Protestant diversity ? " Thou 
that killest the prophets ! " — the system to which 
this apostrophe can be applied is doomed. And it 
matters little who the prophets may be. 



AN EVENING WITH GHOSTS 251 



AN EVENING WITH GHOSTS. 

One of the first results of the Eevolution of Sep- 
tember is a feeling of freedom in the investigation 
of spiritual phenomena. Up to 1868 the mind of 
Spain was under too perfect discipline to meddle 
overmuch with forbidden things. The Spaniard is 
naturally credulous and superstitious, and therefore 
one would have expected that the modern rapping 
gospel would have made its earliest inroads in this 
country. But the priests checked it on its first ap- 
pearance, by the appliances of the confessional, as 
thoroughly as Protestantism was extinguished three 
hundred years ago, when the rest of Europe was 
ablaze with it. A clever lady of the court told me 
of an exciting evening at Aranjuez, some years ago, 
when the wood talked and the tables skipped like 
rams, to the amazement of the high-born circle. 
Even majesty was deeply impressed, and chatted 
with the loquacious furniture as friend with friend. 
But in next day's confession the obedient flock was 
shown the awful scandal of such diabolical games, 
and there was never another Circle in the palace. 

Yet there are special reasons why the Spanish 
mind should be easily influenced to receive any 



252 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

news which should bear semblance of proceeding 
from the invisible world. Nowhere in this age does 
the visionary realm touch so closely upon the con- 
fines of the actual. Nowhere is there so vivid and 
tangible an idea of the world of spirits in the minds 
of the common people. This is partly owing to the 
traditional teachings of the Church. The clergy 
have always used from the earliest ages the power- 
ful machinery of the unseen world with great effect. 
The ignorance resulting from the poverty and wars 
of the Middle Ages made this practicable, and the 
use of this means of domination sustained the igno- 
rance on which it flourished. So that the Devil is 
more intimately known and honored in Spain than 
anywhere else. He is a real, genuine imp, such as 
you can paint in pictures and dress in pantomime ; 
not the vague, shadowy ideal of evil to which he 
has faded away in more enlightened lands. He is 
as real and substantial as the goat-footed master of 
the witches of the Brocken, with those graminivo- 
rous hoofs and horns that are the despair of vege- 
tarian philosophers. 

I read an exquisite passage in Father Claret's 
inimitable book, the Golden Key of the Confes- 
sional, published by high ecclesiastical authority. 
He relates how a woman died in sin ; her com- 
panion, sitting by the corpse, heard a noise at the 
door ; opening it, he saw in the darkness two devils 
blacker than the night. One of them carried a 
bridle and one a saddle. 



AN EVENING WITH GHOSTS. 253 

" What do you want ? " asked the horror-stricken 
youth. 

" A mule of ours." (" Mule " in Spanish is femi- 
nine.) 

" There is no mule in this house." 

" That we shall see," said the grisly visitors, for- 
cing their way into the room. They saddled and 
bridled the poor corpse, and rode gayly off through 
the window to eternal flames. 

The eminent chaplain gives this hideously gro- 
tesque story as an actual occurrence within his per- 
sonal knowledge. 

The very air in Spain is peopled with devils. If 
any one yawns, among the lower classes, he makes 
the sign of the cross over his mouth to keep the 
devilkins from slipping down his throat, and all the 
company say " Jesus." 

The superstitions of the Middle Ages, which 
Michelet has so terribly painted in La Sorciere, 
seem to have survived only in Spain. Here only 
are traditions to-day recounted as facts and not 
fables. I was walking one day in the old and pic- 
turesque barrier of Madrid that bounds the city to 
the south, when I stumbled upon a quaint and 
silent lane called La Calle de la Cabeza, — the 
Street of the Head. I was sure there was a story 
worth knowing in this name, and the first well-in- 
formed person I asked told me the history of the 
street with all gravity. Many years ago a man of 



254 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Madrid, moved and instigated by the Devil, mur- 
dered a friar and escaped to Portugal. He made a 
fortune there, and returned, when people had for- 
gotten his crime, to live in his native city. Walk- 
ing by the market one morning, he saw a fine 
sheep's head for sale, and fearing it would be gone 
before he could send a servant for it, he bought it, 
and carried it away under his cloak. As he walked 
home the blood dripped on the road and attracted 
the attention of one of the Holy Brotherhood. 
" What bearest thou, cavalier ? " Now a cavalier 
in Spain can carry nothing but a sword or a woman 
without dishonor. So this well-dressed hidalgo 
answered that he bore nothing. This confirmed the 
suspicions of the zealous Familiar, and he said, 
" My brother, thou hast somewhat unlawful beneath 
thy capa" The cavalier with great shame then dis- 
played his purchase, and of course it was the 
sheepish head of the slain friar. They beheaded 
the culprit and seized his goods ; " and the moment 
this was done," said my devout informant with per- 
fect innocence, "the friar's head became a sheep's 
head again, and was nailed by the Holy Office to 
the murderer's house, as a proof of the miracle." 

There is still a profound belief in Spain of the 
power of certain unholy incantations to raise un- 
quiet spirits and oblige them to works of magic. 
When a juggler performs in a theatre, he expressly 
states that his science is white magic, as distin- 



AN EVENING WITH GHOSTS. 255 

guished from the black art, and is dependent solely 
upon dexterity of hand and not at all upon com- 
merce with damned souls. It is two centuries and 
a half since Cervantes described the innocent trick 
of the Speaking Head in Barcelona, which brought 
upon Don Quixote's hospitable entertainer the warn- 
ing of the Inquisition, — " ever-watchful sentinels 
of our Faith " ; and even yet, in the last edition of 
the Dictionary of the Academy, prepared by the 
most lettered men of the kingdom, occurs this pre- 
posterous definition : — 

" Necromancy : The abominable art of executing 
strange and preternatural things by means of the in- 
vocation of the Devil and by compact with him." 

Never, in all the darkest periods of Spanish his- 
tory, was the reign of superstition so absolute and 
tyrannical as in the Alcazar of Madrid during the 
later years of Isabel of Bourbon. Her most trusted 
spiritual guides and counsellors were the Padre 
Claret, heretofore mentioned, and Sor Patrocinio de 
las Llagas, — the Bleeding Nun. This worthy lady 
used to bring the most astonishing stories of her 
night's adventures to the breakfast-table. It was a 
common occurrence for his Satanic Highness to 
come swooping down to her cell and to give her an 
airing, on his bat-like wings, above the housetops 
of the capital. She had miraculous fountains con- 
tinually open in her legs (if the word be lawful) 



256 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

which bled without pain or disease. Her principal 
duty in the palace was to sanctify by a day's wear- 
ing the intimate linen destined to the use of her 
pious mistress and friend. Thus consecrated, the 
garments became a mystic panoply, which would 
keep away all infirmity and sin, if anything could. 

It is not surprising that the clergy speculated 
safely upon this boundless fund of credulity, nor 
that they should fight to the death against any kin- 
dred delusions which should come poaching into 
their traditional preserves. All their efforts have, 
however, been unavailing to prevent a spirit of va- 
grant inquiry. The dikes reared with such labor 
were seriously damaged by the flood of revolution, 
and the Spanish conscience no longer runs entirely 
in the channel of other days. The thunders of the 
Church are powerless against the dissenting prayer- 
meetings and the rapping circles of the spiritists. 
The shock of the last two years of reform and 
emancipation has set free a great number of uneasy 
minds to wander at will in the ways of speculation. 
The voice of the Church is not silent by any means. 
A distinguished prelate has issued this syllogism to 
confound the new scandal : — 

Spiritism is either natural or supernatural ; it is 
not natural ; therefore it is supernatural. 

Being supernatural, it must proceed from God or 
the Devil ; it does not proceed from God ; Argal — ■ 
the conclusion is too painful to dwell upon. 



AN EVENING WITH GHOSTS. 257 

The influence of the vices of slavery are always 
seen in the first generation of freedmen. The 
utterly broken the chain of ghostly thraldom, 
Spiritualists of Spain, who imagine they have 
accept with a childlike credulity the figments of 
their own excited imaginations. They have not 
yet arrived at the point of actual discussion and 
genuine investigation. The advocates of the new 
belief embrace it as a new religion, and its oppo- 
nents shut their eyes and ears and denounce it as 
rank impiety. Test seances are really never held. 
The pretended manifestations are never subject to a 
serious scrutiny. But the circles are continually 
increasing in numbers and interest. The neophytes, 
who were at first confined to the lower middle class, 
now embrace many of the wealthier people, and the 
new faith is beginning to attack the serene and 
blue-blooded aristocracy. Although it may be only 
exchanging one superstition for another cognate, 
there is a certain feeling of relief in turning from 
the thought of that gloomy Spanish limbo, peopled 
with doleful penitents and malignant demons, to 
that trivial and debonair heaven of the table-tippers, 
filled with men and women only a little sillier than 
ourselves. 

I accepted gratefully one evening the invitation 
of a friend to assist at a session of one of the prin- 
cipal circles of Madrid. It was held in the ground 
floor of a good house in a good quarter. I found 



258 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

about a dozen gentlemen of various ages talking 
with that air of idle expectancy which always pre- 
cedes a performance, and — the firs£ time that I have 
seen such a phenomenon in Spain — not smoking. 
They all seemed to think as a matter of course that 
I must be of the fraternity, being an American. 
One of them showed me on the wall the litho- 
graphed portrait of a stout gentleman, whom he 
evidently regarded with great veneration, and said, 
" There is one of the greatest names that America 
has produced." I saw it was not Washington nor 
James Fisk, and looked at the florid signature, — 
Allan Kardec. I was about to argue myself un- 
known by admitting I did not know Mr. Kardec, 
when another brother interrupted my interlocutor 
with the friendly expostulation, "Art thou a don- 
key ? Allan Kardec was a Frenchman. The great 
American is Mees Fox." 

They asked me if I would like to ask some 
questions as a test. I wrote two. 1. Whether a 
friend of whose illness I had just been informed 
was living or dead. 2. What was the true theory 
of the American Planchette. 

My questions were laid on the table before the 
President's chair. 

The room filled rapidly. A large round table 
occupied a considerable portion of it, and the me- 
diums took their places there, well furnished with 
paper and pencils. The rest, who had not " risen 



AN EVENING WITH GHOSTS. 259 

to the Dome of Disclosure/' but whx) consisted, I 
should think, of about equal parts of believers and 
sceptics, filled the line of chairs against the wall 
that extended around the room. There was but one 
lady present, and it is perhaps unnecessary to state 
that she was not one of the listeners. She shook 
her curls out, arranged her cuffs and collar, marched 
to the table, and seized a pencil to be ready for the 
moment of inspiration. 

The President — a grave, official-looking person of 
middle age, who holds a high position in the Minis- 
try of Finance — called for the reading of the minutes 
of the last meeting, and then announced the seance 
opened. He said, as there were present an unusual 
number of the profane, it would perhaps be better to 
give the evening up to special tests, rather than to 
the discussion of principles. He picked up my two 
questions. He said, " The first question is personal. 
Who will answer it ? " 

" I," said a frowsy, uncombed, rustic-looking man, 
with heavy eyes and rough laborer's hands. 

" Who art thou ? " said the President, sternly. 

The man's hand grasped the pencil and wrote with 
incredible swiftness, — 

" Cervantes." 

"Answer then." 

The stumpy fingers wrote again : — 

" He died last night at five minutes past six." 

The President said, " Is that true ? " 



260 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

The medium gazed at me with a stupid expres- 
sion, which was still not without anxiety. He was 
evidently new in the circle, and his reputation was 
at stake. 

" I do not know," I said ; " I have heard he is very 
ill. I will ask where he died." 

The hard hand grasped the pencil and wrote, — 

" Paris." 

The President looked inquiringly at me. I said, 
" No. It is impossible. The sick man was not in 
Paris." 

"Perhaps he has just gone there," said the 
medium. 

" He was never there," I answered. 

The President spoke with great severity, looking 
at the delinquent medium. " Thou hast lied. Thou 
hast taken upon thyself a name which does not 
belong to thee. I know thee well. Thou art 
Lucretia. If thou sufferest, if thou hast complaints 
to make, let us hear them under thine own name." 

The spirit thus paternally dragooned preserved an 
obstinate silence. 

The President added more kindly, "Why hast 
thou done this ? " 

If a pencil could be snappish, I would apply that 
epithet to the way that crayon flew over the paper 
and wrote, — 

" Because I felt like it, — that 's why." 

" Go to, Lucretia, thou art impertinent," said the 
calm President. 



AN EVENING WITH GHOSTS. 261 

I turned to my neighbor, a regular habitue of the 
circle, and asked, " Who is Lucretia ? " 

" Borgia ! and she gives us no end of trouble. She 
is always assuming some new character. You can't 
believe a word she says." 

This was said in the most matter-of-fact way con- 
ceivable. 

Ccelwn non animam mutavit, I thought. She is 
a woman still, though a ghost for centuries. 

A tall, handsome young fellow rose, with a pre- 
posterously high forehead and an Andalusian face. 

" That is the poet Laurino," said my neighbor. 

"I have thought, Mr. President," said Laurino, 
" that there might have been some mistake in the 
answer given by the last medium. I had addressed 
a mental question to the spirit of Cervantes, and I 
imagine he desired to communicate with me." 

The scrubby medium, anxious to retrieve his 
reputation, soiled by contact with Miss Borgia, im- 
mediately wrote, — 

" That is true." 

" How shall we know if you are Cervantes ? " was 
asked. 

" By my style." 

The answer was fine and Castilian in sentiment, 
but the President interrupted, — 

" Another hand is answering the question of Mr. 
Laurino." 

I looked at the mediums ranged around the table, 



262 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

and saw the slender instrument through which the 
vast spirit of Cervantes was supposed to be breath- 
ing. He was a pale, nervous, delicate youth, with 
large eyes, large ears, and the most enormous nose 
I have ever seen out of carnival. Large noses al- 
ways exaggerate the prevailing character of the face. 
To a strong face like Wellington's they give an ex- 
pression of invincibility. From a weak face like 
the one before us, they take away even that which 
it hath. The visage of this boy was weak and im- 
pressible beyond description. His hands were white 
and frail as a lady's. He wrote with such rapidity 
that his pale fingers twinkled as you gazed. 

He filled in about twenty minutes six pages of 
manuscript, and read it to the audience. It was a 
circumstantial account of the life and religious pro- 
fession of that mysterious daughter of Cervantes, 
Isabel de Saavedra, whose history is a shadow, writ- 
ten with great directness and some resemblance to 
the style of the great Castilian. It was at least 
more like Cervantes than Ireland was like Shake- 
speare. 

The strangers were amused, the general public 
bored. But the young poet was in ecstasies. " I 
have devoted years of study to the life of Cervantes," 
he said, " and now this revelation convinces me that 
my deductions are true. I do not wish to trespass, 
but I would like to ask one question more." 

The President assented, and Mr. Laurino, with a 



AN EVENING WITH GHOSTS. 263 

hand trembling with agitation, wrote a searching 
and exhaustive inquiry as to what was the inner 
meaning of Cervantes's Romance of Persiles. 

The young gentleman who had achieved such a 
triumph with his first question girded up his loins 
to attack the second. 

I saw the seance, as is apt to be the case, was de- 
generating into a dialogue, and thought of going, 
when a disciple rushed in from an adjoining room 
and said there were some extraordinary physical 
manifestations going on there. Those of us who 
were indifferently interested in Mr. Laurino's view 
of Persiles went into a room adjacent, and there 
saw a most comical old gentleman and two heavy- 
looking young ones pushing a small table rapidly 
over the floor. It was impossible to doubt their 
good faith. They looked as if they really believed 
that that bewitched piece of furniture was dragging 
them helplessly after it. Que fuerza tiene ! gasped 
the old gentleman, letting go with one hand and 
mopping his red face with the other. The table 
hopped a little farther and stopped. 

The old gentleman finished his mopping, and then 
his polishing, until his honest old face shone like 
burnished copper from the white hair to the white 
mustache. He then returned to the frisky table 
and addressed it in the affectionate second person 
singular. 

" If thou hast fluid enough to march again, lift 
up one paw." 



264 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

If the four-legged table had accomplished that 
miracle, I should have believed and trembled. But 
it did not stir. 

" If thou hast not fluid enough to march, lift up 
two paws," 

This request being much more practicable, the 
table lifted up two legs with as much ease as if it 
had danced the Bolero from its youth up. 

Convinced that the lack of fluid would prevent 
any further furniture gymnastics that evening, we 
went back into the other room where the pale youth 
had finished Cervantes's exposition of Persiles, and 
was reading it aloud. 

Mr. Laurino was almost beside himself with de- 
light. " Caballeros ! " he said, " there are not one 
hundred men in Spain who have read Persiles — " 

" Nor anything else," growled my cynical friend. 

" I have made it a study of years, and I assert 
boldly that this young man has given a more per- 
fect exposition of the inner significance of the Bo- 
mance than exists in the Castilian language. He 
agrees entirely with ME ! Now excuse me, Cabal- 
leros, I have only two more questions to ask." 

Here the suppressed impatience of the other 
seekers after truth burst forth, and insisted on the 
ardent poet waiting until some more practical mat- 
ters were disposed of. 

One man had asked what lottery-ticket he had 
better buy, and was cruelly snubbed by his favorite 
spirit. 



AN EVENING WITH GHOSTS. 265 

Another asked who was Prim's candidate for the 
throne, and was answered, " The future King of 
Spain," — a reply worthy of Delphos. 

Florida Blanca, in reply to an inquiry, sustained 
the right of society to punish crime, but not to take 
life. 

To my innocent question about Planchette, Lucre- 
tia Borgia again answered with some asperity, this 
time by the fair hand of the lone lady, that if I 
would read the books of spiritualism I would find 
what they thought about it. As I had not asked, 
and did not care what they thought about it, I 
thought Signorina Lucrezia was not treating me 
candidly. But then I reflected that candor was never 
a distinguishing trait of the Borgias, and we parted 
friends. 

Mr. Laurino rose once more to ask a question 
connected with the subjective life of the author of 
Quixote, when the lady who was acting as aman- 
uensis for the perturbed ghost of the Boman Lucre- 
tia who did not prefer death to dishonor — tant s'en 
faut — wrote a sentence with energy and handed it 
to Mr. Laurino, who read it and said with great 
dignity, " I find this communication in the highest 
degree indecorous, and decline to receive it." 

The President took it and read it aloud : — 

" Cervantes is a dunce, who from a distance appears 
to other dunces as a genius. 

" Lucretia." 



266 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

A dictum which certainly shines rather by origi- 
nality than justice. 

I was sure that I would hear nothing else so 
novel that night and came away, and in half an 
hour more was involved in the Algebra of the Ger- 
man Cotillon, as if there were no death or ghosts, 
or bilious poets with long hair, or impressible 
youths with great trumpet noses in the world. 



PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 267 



PEOYEEBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 

The use of proverbs is characteristic of an un- 
lettered people. The common-sense of the lower 
classes is condensed into these terse and convenient 
phrases, and they pass from hand to hand as the pence 
and farthings of conversation. They are invaluable 
treasures to dunces with good memories. They 
give a semblance of wit to the speech of the dull. 
Like a few phrases of slang, which fix into portable 
shape the nebulous ideas of the vulgar, a judicious 
use of proverbs makes the haziest utterances seem 
distinct and vigorous. 

Especially among a people who have no literature 
these traditional refrains are employed and valued. 
The Spanish authors that every one talks about, you 
can count on your fingers. They are the glory of 
Spain, but they are little quoted, because little read. 
Even Quixote, the Spanish gospel, is more read in 
America than in Spain. In the journals, in public 
speeches, in the common conversations of every day, 
the attic salt is furnished by this unwritten crystal- 
lized wisdom of other days. 

I have recorded a few dozen as samples of the 
thousands in constant use. Some are striking from 



268 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

a certain vividness of expression, — as a deadly 
affront is characterized as " throwing a cat in one's 
face"; others by a certain logical quality, — as "there 
are no colts without mares," which does the duty of 
our " no smoke without fire," and with more truth, 
as any chemist can inform you. The Spaniard's 
distrust of his rulers is indicated in the saying, 
" The Alcalde's son goes safe to trial," and his sturdy 
democracy finds expression in the assertion, " Many 
a man gets to heaven in tow breeches." 

If you would accept a nation's proverbs as the 
representative of its wisdom, every people would be 
composed of Franklins. There is a fund of fore- 
thought and prudence, and a canny knowledge of 
human nature contained in these condensed apo- 
logues that we seek for in vain among the men who 
use them. The Spaniards are a people of expedi-^ 
ents, but what a radical lesson there is in the 
couplet, — 

" The web will grow no wider, 
When you have killed the spider." 

Our " bird in the hand " is a favorite image every- 
where. The Germans think " a wren in the hand 
is better than a dove on the housetop " ; and the 
Spaniards, more graphic still, say " A sparrow in the 
hand is better than a buzzard on the wing." The 
lesson of industry is taught by the rhyme, — 

A quien madruga 
Dios le ayuda, — 



PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 269 

"God helps the early riser." The fellowship of wick- 
edness is shown by the zoological fact that " the 
wolf and the fox never come to hard knocks." The 
bad effect of evil communications is lucidly set 
forth in the warning, that " he who goes to bed with 
dogs will get up with fleas." 

The proverbs inculcating reserve and discretion 
are here, as in all other tongues, most numerous. 
The duties of generosity and gratitude are taught 
in one admirable phrase, " Let the giver be silent 
and the taker speak." The folly of false pretences 
is brought home to you by the admonition, " If you 
wear the clothes of others, you may be stripped in 
the street." Do not talk over much, for " a miawling 
cat takes no mice." The best side of Spanish valor 
is seen in the injunction which Don Quixote gives 
to build a bridge of silver for the flying foe, and in 
that other sensible word of advice, "Always give 
the road to winds and madmen." Sometimes the 
tradition of the neighborhood runs into couplets 
combining a variety of precepts, as in this popular 
Andalusian rhyme : — 

" Don't take another's child for thine. 
Eide broken colts. And buy thy wine. 
If trusted, never trust again. 
Nor brag of thy wife to other men." 

Any one who has cultivated his own grapes will see 
the wisdom of that second line, and if King Can- 
daules had thought of the fourth verse in time, he 
might have been to-day upon the throne. 



270 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

The proverbs advise moderation in all things. 
Do not push your pleasures to satiety: "Do not 
squeeze the orange till the juice is bitter." Even 
an excess of energy and enterprise may be fatal : 
" He who wanted to get rich in a twelvemonth was 
hanged in six." Do not waste your strength uselessly: 
" Daybreak comes no sooner for your early rising." 
Beware of too much forethought of things not 
certain : — 

" Jack and Gill, who son had none, 
Fought about naming him James or John." 

The duty of economy is, however, exalted, as 
much as if Poor Eichard had passed through the 
Peninsula. How like our Benjamin is this : — 

" Cover your daughters with silks and fuis : 
Your farm will cover itself with burrs." 

A spendthrift, when thoroughly ruined, is very cor- 
dially despised in Spain. They say, " He has spent 
everything, to the wax in his ears." The last stage 
of hopeless worthlessness is reached when " he has 
nothing left for God to rain on." 

The Spaniard loves good cheer whether he can 
afford it or not. The Peninsula is the land of want. 
A friend of mine once asked a beautiful little boy 
who was begging on a road in Granada where his 
parents were. " I have none," said the little 
vagrant ; " Soy Mjo de hambre, — I am the child of 
hunger." The usual Spanish idea of luxury is a 



PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 271 

plenty to eat. The Iberian phrase which translates 
onr festive " high jinks," is arroz y gallo muerto, — 
" rice and dead cock," — the ultimate expression of 
wasteful wassail. The varied composition of the 
Olla is a temptation to the cook. So that a Span- 
iard who is up to the Maccaboy is said " to know 
cat from hare in his pottage." The sober feasts of 
the Peninsula are always enlivened by moderate 
potations : " Wine softens a hard bed." There are 
certain favorite edibles also, which, according to the 
proverb, from the nature of their structure abso- 
lutely require vinous irrigation to prevent disastrous 
consequences : — 

" Rice, cucumbers, and sea-fish fine 
Grow in water, and die in wine." 

But, after all, bread stands first in the Spaniard's 
catalogue of good things, as it ought. When 
Sancho on his way back from his Island, full of the 
bitter experiences of political life, tumbled, into the 
cave with his faithful donkey, he found the most 
solid consolation in dividing his loaf with his long- 
eared friend, and in assuring him that todos los 
duelos con pan son buenos, — " bread is a cure for every 
grief." The faith the people have in the virtues of 
the simplest provend is seen in the rhyme, — 

" If garlic and wine and bread be had, 
The dullest boor is a lively lad." 

And let no one who has dined at the Trois Freres 



272 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

scorn the fragrant fruit which every trne Spaniard 
loves. The brothers of Provence owed their brilliant 
success to the delicate suspicion of ail that flavored 
with the poetry of the South their early cuisine. 

There are a few proverbs of manners that care- 
fully guard the golden mean between rudeness and 
servility. You are warned that "stabs heal, but 
bad words never." A soft answer is considered an 
admirable thing in its way, but in Spain you must 
keep your eyes open: "honey in the mouth and 
hand on your purse." Do not be too good-natured : 
" If you make yourself honey the flies will eat you." 
Be ready to ask for what you want and to assert 
your rights with clamor if need be : Quien no llama, 
no mama, — " A still baby gets no milk." But in all 
things preserve the dignity of manhood ; for Quien 
muclio se baja, el culo ensena, — " He who bows too 
much exposes to general comment an unfavorable 
side of his person and his character." If the 
wicked prosper and give scandal to the faithful, as 
the English philosopher remembers that every dog 
has his day, the Spaniard reflects that " every hog 
has his St. Martin's." And if things do not go pre- 
cisely to suit us, we can observe that "the chicken 
clings to life, even with the pip," and that "there is 
a remedy for everything but death." 

This is not strictly true, however, for in these 
Catholic countries there is no remedy for marriage. 
For these benighted souls the fetter-dissolving light 



PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 273 

of Indiana and Lord Penzance's Court has never 
shone. Therefore it behooves the Spanish wooer to 
wed with the utmost circumspection. Mere beauty 
is not enough : — 

" Choosing a melon or maid by the rind, — 
A man who has eyes is no better than blind." 

Mrs. Browning wrote a charming little poem to 
show you should not propose in a ball-room, and the 
Spanish aphorist agrees with her : — 

" Seed wheat and wives, to be chosen aright, 
Should not be examined by candle-light." 

Young ladies are admonished of the danger there 
is in a breath of scandal : — 

" A peach that is spotted 
Will never be potted." 

The proverbial philosopher does not believe much 
in love at first sight ; there is a rhyme that runs, — 

" "Wed with a maid that all your life, 
You 've known and have believed. 
"Who rides ten leagues to find a wife 
Deceives or is deceived." 

Finally, the two things that of all others will not 
stand trifling with are women and money : Con la 
mujer y el dinero, no te buries companero. Let every 
man exercise his utmost sagacity in the choice of 
his partner, but, having chosen, let him abide by his 
decision : " If you take a cat to bed, do not com- 
plain of her claws." 

12* R 



274 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

The strong Spanish feeling of domesticity is 
everywhere seen in their common speech. A 
favorite saying is, " Every man in his own house 
and God in everybody's." Many devout Moslems 
deny the gates of paradise to a man who has not 
produced a house, a book, or a child. This obliga- 
tion of house-building seems to rest upon all 
Spaniards who can afford it ; and there is a solemn 
proverb of quite an Oriental flavor which says, 
" When the house is finished, the hearse is at the 
door." 

But when the house is built the average male 
Spaniard regards it as the only appropriate place 
for the wife of his bosom. The outside gayeties 
have no right to distract her thoughts, — 

" The only amusement a wife should desire 
Is looking at faces in the fire." 

" The best women in Spain are those with broken 
legs." Endless evils may follow the habit of gad- 
ding, — 

" A woman or hen that 's given to roam 
One of these nights will not come home." 

Why should a woman want to go out ? says the 
average male Spaniard. "For whom are the rib- 
bons of the blind man's wife ? " He cannot con- 
ceive, this obtuse male Spaniard, that perhaps Mrs. 
Milton has an eye for color, and likes to be neat 
when she goes to mass, or to chat a moment with 



PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 275 

Mrs. Homer. The proverbial Spaniard disapproves 
of chatting. He says, "A long tongue weaves a 
short web." He says a talkative housewife is a 
simulacrum : " Keys in the girdle and dogs in the 
pantry." 

The highest feminine ideal is that of the sleek 
odalisque or stunted squaw of the West, who toils 
all day, and, like the fugitives who used to be posted 
in our Southern cities, " smiles when spoken to." 

" The honest maid is ever gay ; 
Of work she makes her holiday." 

There is one proverb I should be afraid to set 
down here, if I did not record merely to de- 
nounce it. "Show me your wife, and I will tell 
you whom she married," is used to express the idea 
that the behavior of inferiors is the best test of 
the ability of governors. The proverb-mongers of 
Spain evidently need a season of the soprano 
thunders of American lyceums. They have even 
the audacity to say, — 

" All things in the house go ill 
"When the hen crows and the cock is still." 

The old Eoman contempt for women survives in 
this distant peninsula, tinged with that African 
sensuality which denied them souls and yet adored 
them. An Andalusian refrain says, — 

" There is no sea-wave without salt, 
There is no woman without fault " : 



276 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

which is true enough if woman embraces man. 
But the charm of youth is confessed in the adage, 
" Nothing is ugly at fifteen," and grapes and beauty 
must both be appreciated among a people who 
say, " Vineyards and maidens are hard to guard." 
But the hard struggle for subsistence, the difficult 
dowry of girls, and this half-pagan resentment at 
their presence in the world, is seen in the common 
inquiry as to good or bad news, " Is it a boy or 
girl ? " An enterprise which after great labor brings 
no result is called mala noclie yparir kija, — "a hard 
night and a girl in the morning." Everybody knows 
that a house full of girls is a house full of joy, but 
the Spanish proverb says, — 

" Three daughters and one mother, 
Four devils for the father." 

It further says maliciously that the most fragile 
articles of furniture are "women and window- 
panes." An ill-bred and loutish youth is called in 
general parlance " son of a widow " ; this arises 
from the idea that the rod is apt to be spared in the 
widowed household, and the orthodox Spanish be- 
lief is that instruction can only be conveyed to 
mules and boys by a topical application, — Mjo y 
mulo para el culo. 

But there is one proverb which unwittingly ad- 
mits that the cause of all these malignant slanders 
of the adage-making race lies in a galling sense of 



PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 277 

their own inferiority to the lovely beings they 
traduce, — 

" Women and wine are things that can 
Take the wit out of the wisest man." 

These blasphemies are carried into the sacred 
household circle. They say, " No sugar can sweeten 
a mother-in-law." You can see in such an utter- 
ance the spirit of some Iberian Thackeray declaring 
that the happiness of Adam in Eden consisted in 
having no mother-in-law. There is a fiendish rhyme 
addressed to this injured and necessary class, — 

" You will leave to your son-in-law when you depart, 
Crape on his hat and joy in his heart." 

There is a touch of Celtic nature in this injunc- 
tion, which will be appreciated by all policemen 
who have ventured to save a lady of the name of 
Bridget from the chastising hand of a descendant 
of the Kings of Connaught, — 

" In fights between spouses and brothers, 
Bad luck to the man that bothers." 

Proverbs referring to the family relation are in- 
numerable. Here is one pregnant with meaning to 
young men, — 

" Son thou art and father shalt be ; 
As thou to thy sire, thy son to thee." 

The Hebrew's dinner of herbs is matched by the 
Spaniard's " bread with love is better than a chicken 
with strife." But there is a curious cynicism in 



278 CASTILTAN DAYS. 

another refrain that refers to the restraining virtues 
of poverty, "When a man has no money, he calls 
his wife Honey." 

The widespread error about the wickedness of 
parsons' boys has extended into Spain. Padre santo 
hijo diahloy they say, — " father saint and son devil " ; 
but bad as the sons may be, the collateral descen- 
dants seem to be much worse, according to the prov- 
erb which asserts that " to whom God gave no sons 
the Devil gave nephews." Or does this refer to the 
supernatural or infranatural sources from which the 
celibate clergy derive their heirs? Anyway, it is 
to be inferred that the company of a nephew is not 
so agreeable that the appetite for it should grow by 
what it feeds on, for the adage warns him against 
too frequent visits, — 

" En casa de tia, 
Mas no cada dia." 

Still, the strong tie of consanguinity is recognized 
in the aphorism, " An ounce of blood is better than 
a pound of friendship," — a truth worth remember- 
ing in this land where the claims of race and clan 
outweigh all obligations of honor or gratitude. 

In a scrap of proverb you will sometimes see a 
page of the dark history of bigotry and wars. " Do 
not carry a Jew in your body " means " Do not bear 
malice," and shows that these good Catholics really 
disliked being hated by the poor creatures they 



PEOVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 279 

robbed and murdered through so many ages. "No 
matter from what hands gold came, it was always 
orthodox, — El dinero es muy Catolico. What a 
view of the long years of disappointment passed in 
the fruitless study of astrology survives in the 
adage, " There is nothing so sure as the lying of the 
stars." What a blase expression of disillusion in 
the contemplation of moral grandeur and the fierce 
Spanish pursuit of wealth you find in the words, 
" In stories of goodness and riches the half is a lie." 
A mild satire upon those who labor for wealth they 
cannot use is conveyed in the rhyme, — 

For dinero 
Baila el perro, — 

" The dog dances for money." 

There is a species of Eastern devoutness in the 
manner in which the Spaniard accepts anything 
which may be called a dispensation of Heaven. 
" God gives the sore and knows the medicine," he 
says. No detail of life is too trivial for Divine 
ordering, — 

" Each man sneezes 
As God pleases." 

Yet common-sense asserts itself in other mottoes ; 
as, " Pray ! but swing your hammer." An encour- 
aging phrase in situations of extreme difficulty is, 
" There are Bulls for the dead." So devout a peo- 
ple must pray briskly, or there will be no time for 
anything else ; so that the definition of promptness 



280 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

which we indicate by the time necessary to pro- 
nounce the name of Mr. John Bobinson becomes 
in Spain " in an Ave Maria." It was not to the 
interest of the Church that the faithful should neg- 
lect the means of grace. Masses were the serious 
business of life. So when a man dies they say " he 
has gone to give an account of his masses," — just 
as they remark in the profane West that " he has 
passed in his checks." They had their quiet joke 
at their ghostly comforters also. Money that has 
been gained without labor, and is therefore spent 
without remorse, is called " Sacristan's cash." 

The Adversary plays his part in Spanish proverb 
as well as in Spanish theology. In any tumultuous 
hubbub they say the Devil is loose. There is a fine 
moral in another saying, " When we lie in wait for 
our neighbor the Devil lies in wait for us." 

There is little that is comforting in the Spaniard's 
idea of the Creator. The French peasant's ton Dieu 
ceases to exist at the Pyrenees and is replaced by a 
stern and awful image that has too much of royalty 
to be loved and cherished. What a history of fruit- 
less struggle, of belief baffled, there is in the prov- 
erb, "If God is against you, the saints are of no 
use." And what a grim smile of rebellious resigna- 
tion in the quaint phrase, " God gives almonds to the 
toothless." Still, here as everywhere, through all 
the fog and mist of superstition, some ray of the 
divine and fatherly love finds out and cheers these 



PKOVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 281 

trusting souls, until they feel they are not utterly 
desolate. " God sends the cold according to our 
rags," is their simple and touching confession of 
faith. And there is a rude and Asian dignity about 
that other saying, with which they console them- 
selves amid all their sorrows and their wrongs, — 

" God is not dead of old age." 



282 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



THE CEADLE AND GEAVE OF CERVANTES. 

In Eembrandt Peale's raw picture of the Court 
of Death a cadaverous shape lies for judgment at 
the foot of the throne, touching at either extremity 
the waters of Lethe. There is something similar in 
the history of the greatest of Spanish writers. No 
man knew, for more than a century after the death 
of Cervantes, the place of his birth and burial. 
About a hundred years ago the investigations of 
Eios and Pellicer established the claim of Alcala 
de Henares to be his native city ; and last year the 
researches of the Spanish Academy have proved 
conclusively that he is buried in the Convent of 
the Trinitarians in Madrid. But the precise spot 
where he was born is only indicated by vague tra- 
dition ; and the shadowy conjecture that has so 
long hallowed the chapel and cloisters of the Calle 
Cantarranas has never settled upon any one slab 
of their pavement. 

It is, however, only the beginning and the end 
of this most chivalrous and genial apparition of the 
sixteenth century that is concealed from our view. 
We know where he was christened and where he 
died. So that there are sufficiently authentic shrines 






THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES. 283 

in Alcala and Madrid to satisfy the most sceptical 
pilgrims. 

I went to Alcala one summer day, when the bare 
fields were brown and dry in their after-harvest 
nudity, and the hills that bordered the winding 
Henares were drab in the light and purple in the 
shadow. From a distance the town is one of the 
most imposing in Castile. It lies in the midst of a 
vast plain by the green water-side, and the land 
approach is fortified by a most impressive wall 
emphasized by sturdy square towers and flanking 
bastions. But as you come nearer you see this wall 
is a tradition. It is almost in ruins. The crenel- 
lated towers are good for nothing but to sketch. A 
short walk from the station brings you to the gate, 
which is well defended by a gang of picturesque 
beggars, who are old enough to have sat for Murillo, 
and revoltingly pitiable enough to be millionnaires 
by this time, if Castilians had the cowardly habit 
of sponging out disagreeable impressions with pen- 
nies. At the first charge we rushed in panic into a 
tobacco-shop arrdr nllecTour pockets with maravedis, 
and thereafter faced the ragged battalion with calm. 

It is a fine, handsome, and terribly lonesome 
town. Its streets are wide, well built, and silent as 
avenues in a graveyard. On every hand there are 
tall and stately churches, a few palaces, and some 
two dozen great monasteries turning their long walls, 
pierced with jealous grated windows, to the grass- 



284 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

grown streets. In many quarters there is no sign 
of life, no human habitations among these morose 
and now empty barracks of a monkish army. Some 
of them have been turned into military casernes, 
and the bright red and blue uniforms of the Span- 
ish officers and troopers now brighten the cloisters 
that used to see nothing gayer than the gowns of 
cord-girdled friars. A large garrison is always kept 
here. The convents are convenient for lodging men 
and horses. The fields in the vicinity produce great 
store of grain and alfalfa, — food for beast and 
rider. It is near enough to the capital to use the 
garrison on any sudden emergency, such as frequent- 
ly happens in Peninsular politics. 

The railroad that runs by Alcala has not brought 
with it any taint of the nineteenth century. The 
army is a corrupting influence, but not modern. 
The vice that follows the trail of armies, or sprouts, 
fungus-like, about the walls of barracks, is as old as 
war, and links the present, with its struggle for a 
better life, to the old mediaeval world of wrong. 
These trim fellows in loose trousers and embroidered 
jackets are the same race that fought and drank 
and made prompt love in Italy and Flanders and 
butchered the Aztecs in the name of religion three 
hundred years ago. They have laid off their helms 
and hauberks, and use the Berdan rifle instead of 
the Eoman spear. But they are the same careless, 
idle, dissolute bread- wasters now as then. 



- THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES. 285 

The town has not changed in the least. It has 
only shrunk a little. You think sometimes it must 
be a vacation, and that you will come again when 
people return. The little you see of the people is 
very attractive. Passing along the desolate streets, 
you glance in at an open door and see a most de- 
lightful cabinet picture of domestic life. All the 
doors in the house are open. You can see through 
the entry, the front room, into the cool court beyond, 
gay with oleanders and vines, where a group of 
women half dressed are sewing and spinning and 
cheering their souls with gossip. If you enter 
under pretence of asking a question, you will be 
received with grave courtesy, your doubts solved, 
and they will bid you go with God, with the quaint 
frankness of patriarchal times. 

They do not seem to have been spoiled by over- 
much travel. Such impressive and Oriental courtesy 
could not have survived the trampling feet of the 
great army of tourists. On our pilgrim-way to the 
cradle of Cervantes we came suddenly upon the 
superb facade of the University. This is one of 
the most exquisite compositions of plateresque in 
existence. The entire front of the central body of 
the building is covered with rich and tasteful orna- 
mentation. Over the great door is an enormous 
escutcheon of the arms of Austria, supported by two 
finely carved statues, — on the one side a nearly nude 
warrior, on the other the New World as a feather- 



286 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

clad Indian-woman. Still above this a fine, bold 
group of statuary, representing, with that reverent 
naivete of early art, God the Father in the work of 
creation. Surrounding the whole front as with a 
frame, and reaching to the ground on either side, is 
carved the knotted cord of the Franciscan monks. 
No description can convey the charming impression 
given by the harmony of proportion and the loving 
finish of detail everywhere seen in this beautifully 
preserved facade. While we were admiring it an 
officer came out of the adjoining cuartel and walked 
by us with jingling spurs. I asked him if one 
could go inside. He shrugged his shoulders with a 
Quien sabe ? indicating a doubt as profound as if I 
had asked him whether chignons were worn in the 
moon. He had never thought of anything inside. 
There was no wine nor pretty girls there. Why 
should one want to go in ? We entered the cool 
vestibule, and were ascending the stairs to the first 
court, when a porter came out of his lodge and in- 
quired our errand. We were wandering barbarians 
with an eye to the picturesque, and would fain see 
the University, if it were not unlawful. He replied, 
in a hushed and scholastic tone of voice, and with a 
succession of confidential winks that would have 
inspired confidence in the heart of a Talleyrand, 
that if our lordships would give him our cards he 
had no doubt he could obtain the required permis- 
sion from the rector. He showed us into a dim, 



THE CEADLE AND GRAVE OF CEKVANTES. 287 

claustral-looking anteroom, in which, as I was told 
by my friend, who trifles in lost moments with the 
Integral Calculus, there were seventy-two chairs 
and one microscopic table. The wall was decked 
with portraits of the youth of the college, all from 
the same artist, who probably went mad from the 
attempt to make fifty beardless faces look unlike 
each other. We sat for some time mourning over 
his failure, until the door opened, and not the por- 
ter, but the rector himself, a most courteous and 
polished gentleman in the black robe and three-cor- 
nered hat of his order, came in and graciously 
placed himself and the University at our disposi- 
tion. We had reason to congratulate ourselves 
upon this good fortune. He showed us every nook 
and corner of the vast edifice, where the present 
and the past elbowed each other at every turn : here 
the boys' gymnasium, there the tomb of Yalles ; here 
the new patent cocks of the water-pipes, and there 
the tri-lingual patio where Alonso Sanchez lectured 
in Arabic, Greek, and Chaldean, doubtless making 
a choice hash of the three ; the airy and graceful 
yaraninfo, or hall of degrees, a masterpiece of 
Moresque architecture, with a gorgeous panelled 
roof, a rich profusion of plaster arabesques and, 
liorresco rcferens, the walls covered with a bright 
French paper. Our good rector groaned at this 
abomination, but said the Gauls had torn away the 
glorious carved panelling for firewood in the war of 



288 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

1808, and the college was too poor to restore it. 
His righteous indignation waxed hot again when we 
came to the beautiful sculptured pulpit of the 
chapel, where all the delicate details are degraded 
by a thick coating of whitewash, which in some 
places has fallen away and shows the gilding of the 
time of the Catholic kings. 

There is in this chapel a picture of the Virgin 
appearing to the great cardinal whom we call Xime- 
nez and the Spaniards Cisneros, which is precious 
for two reasons. The portrait of Ximenez was 
painted from life by the nameless artist, who, it is 
said, came from France for the purpose, and the face 
of the Virgin is a portrait of Isabella the Catholic. 
It is a good wholesome face, such as you would ex- 
pect. But the thin, powerful profile of Ximenez is 
very striking, with his red hair and florid tint, his 
curved beak, and long, nervous lips. He looks not 
unlike that superb portrait Eaphael has left of Car- 
dinal Medici. 

This University is fragrant with the good fame 
of Ximenez. In the principal court there is a fine 
medallion of the illustrious founder and protector, 
as he delighted to be drawn, with a sword in one 
hand and a crucifix in the other, — twin brother in 
genius and fortune of the soldier priest of France, 
the Cardinal-Duke Eichelieu. On his gorgeous 
sarcophagus you read the arrogant epitaph with 
which he revenged himself for the littleness of 
kings and courtiers: — 



THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES. 289 

" Prsetextam junxi sacco, galeamque galero, 
Frater, dux, prsesul, cardineusque pater. 
Quin, virtute mea junctum est diadema cucullo, 
Dum mihi regnauti patuit Gesperia." 

By a happy chance our visit was made in a holi- 
day time, and the students were all away. It was 
better that there should be perfect solitude and 
silence as we walked through the noble system of 
buildings and strove to re-create the student world 
of Cervantes's time. The chronicle which mentions 
the visit of Francis I. to Alcala, when a prisoner in 
Spain, says he was received by eleven thousand 
students. This was only twenty years before the 
birth of Cervantes. The world will never see again 
so brilliant a throng of ingenuous youth as gathered 
together in the great university towns in those 
years of vivid and impassioned greed for letters that 
followed the revival of learning. The romance of 
Oxford or Heidelberg or Harvard is tame compared 
with that electric life of a new-born world that 
wrought and flourished in Padua, Paris, and Alcala. 
Walking with my long-robed scholarly guide through 
the still, shadowy courts, under renaissance arches 
and Moorish roofs, hearing him talking with enthu- 
siasm of the glories of the past and never a word 
of the events of the present, in his pure, strong, 
guttural Castilian, no living thing in view but an 
occasional Franciscan gliding under the graceful 
arcades, it was not difficult to imagine the scenes of 

13 S 



290 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

the intense young life which filled these noble halls 
in that fresh day of aspiration and hope, when this 
Spanish sunlight fell on the marble and the granite 
bright and sharp from the chisel of the builder, and 
the great Ximenez looked proudly on his perfect 
work and saw that it was good. 

The twilight of superstition still hung heavily 
over Europe. But this was nevertheless the break- 
ing of dawn, the herald of the fuller day of inves- 
tigation and inquiry. 

It was into this rosy morning of the modern world 
that Cervantes was ushered in the season of the 
falling leaves of 1547. He was born to a life of 
poverty and struggle and an immortality of fame. 
His own city did not know him while he lived, and 
now is only known through him. Pilgrims often 
come from over distant seas to breathe for one day 
the air that filled his baby lungs, and to muse among 
the scenes that shaped his earliest thoughts. 

We strolled away from the University through 
the still lanes and squares to the Calle Mayor, the 
only thoroughfare of the town that yet retains some 
vestige of traffic. It is a fine, long street bordered 
by stone arcades, within which are the shops, and 
without which in the pleasant afternoon are the 
rosy and contemplative shopkeepers. It would 
seem a pity to disturb their dreamy repose by offer- 
ing to trade ; and in justice to Castilian taste and 
feeling I must say that nobody does it. Half-way 



THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES 291 

down the street a side alley runs to the right, called 
Calle de Cervantes, and into this we turned to find 
the birthplace of the romancer. On one side was a 
line of squalid, quaint, gabled houses, on the other 
a long garden wall. We walked under the shadow 
of the latter and stared at the house-fronts, looking 
for an inscription we had heard of. We saw in 
sunny doorways mothers oiling into obedience the 
stiff horse-tail hair of their daughters. By the 
grated windows we caught glimpses of the black 
eyes and nut-brown cheeks of maidens at their 
needles. But we saw nothing to show which of 
these mansions had been honored by tradition as 
the residence of Eoderick Cervantes. 

A brisk and practical-looking man went past us. 
I asked him where was the house of the poet. He 
smiled in a superior sort of way, and pointed to the 
wall above my head : " There is no such house. 
Some people think it once stood here, and they 
have placed that stone in the garden-wall to mark 
the spot. I believe what I see. It is all child's 
play anyhow, whether true or false. There is bet- 
ter work to be done now than to honor Cervantes. 
He fought for a bigot king, and died in a monk's 
hood." 

" You think lightly of a glory of Castile." 

" If we could forget all the glories of Castile it 
would be better for us." 

" Puede ser" I assented. " Many thanks. May 
your Grace go with God ! " 



292 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

" Health and fraternity ! " lie answered, and moved 
away with a step full of energy and dissent. He 
entered a door under an inscription, " Federal Re- 
publican Club." 

Go your ways, I thought, radical brother. You 
are not so courteous nor so learned as the rector. But 
this Peninsula has need of men like you. The ages 
of belief have done their work for good and ill. Let 
us have some years of the spirit that denies, and 
asks for proofs. The power of the monk is broken, 
but the work is not yet done. The convents have 
been turned into barracks, which is no improve- 
ment. The ringing of spurs in the streets of Alcala 
is no better than the rustling of the sandalled friars. 
If this Eepublican party of yours cannot do some- 
thing to free Spain from the triple curse of crown, 
crozier, and sabre, then Spain is in doleful case. 
They are at last divided, and the first two have 
been sorely weakened in detail. The last should 
be the easiest work. 

The scorn of my radical friend did not prevent 
my copying the modest tablet on the wall : — ■ 

" Here was born Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 
author of Don Quixote. By his fame and his genius 
he belongs to the civilized world ; by his cradle to 
Alcala de Henares." 

There is no doubt of the truth of the latter part 
of this inscription. Eight Spanish towns have 
claimed to have given birth to Cervantes, thus beat- 



THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES. 293 

ing the blind Scian by one town ; every one that can 
show on its church records the baptism of a child 
so called has made its claim. Yet Alcala, who 
spells his name wrong, calling him Carvantes, is 
certainly in the right, as the names of his father, 
mother, brothers, and sisters are also given in its 
records, and all doubt is now removed from the 
matter by the discovery of Cervantes's manuscript 
statement of his captivity in Algiers and his peti- 
tion for employment in America, in both of which 
he styles himself " Natural de Alcala de Henares." 
Having examined the evidence, we considered 
ourselves justly entitled to all the usual emotions 
in visiting the church of the parish, Santa Maria la 
Mayor. It was evening, and from a dozen belfries 
in the neighborhood came the soft dreamy chime of 
silver-throated bells. In the little square in front 
of the church a few families sat in silence on the 
massive stone benches. A few beggars hurried by, 
too intent upon getting home to supper to beg. A 
rural and a twilight repose lay on everything. Only 
in the air, rosy with the level light, flew out and 
greeted each other those musical voices of the bells 
rich with the memories of all the days of Alcala. 
The church was not open, but we followed a sacristan 
in, and he seemed too feeble-minded to forbid. It 
is a pretty church, not large nor imposing, just the 
thing to baptize a nice baby in. Through the dark- 
ness the high altar loomed before us, dimly lighted 



294 CASTTLIAN DAYS*. 

by a few candles where the sacristans were setting 
up the properties for the grand mass of the morrow, 
— Our Lady of the Snows. There was much talk 
and hot discussion as to the placing of the boards 
and the draperies, and the image of Our Lady seemed 
unmoved by words unsuited to her presence. We 
know that every vibration of air makes its own im- 
pression on the world of matter. So that the curses 
of the sacristans at their work, the prayers of peni- 
tents at the altar, the wailing of breaking hearts 
bowed on the pavement through many years, are all 
recorded mysteriously, in these rocky walls. This 
church is the illegible history of the parish. But 
of all its ringing of bells, and swinging of censers, 
and droning of psalms, and putting on and off of 
goodly raiment, the only show that consecrates it 
for the world's pilgrimage is that humble procession 
that came on the 9th day of October, in the year of 
Grace 1547, to baptize Eoderick Cervantes's youngest 
child. There could not be an humbler christening. 
Juan Pardo — John Gray — was the sponsor, and 
the witnesses were " Baltazar Vazquez, the sacristan, 
and I who baptized him and signed with my name," 
says Mr. Bachelor Serrano, who never dreamed he 
was stumbling into fame when he touched that pink 
face with the holy water and called the child Miguel. 
It is my profound conviction that Juan Pardo 
brought the baby himself to the church and took it 
home again, screaming wrathfully ; Neighbor Pardo 



THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES. 295 



feeling a little sheepish and mentally resolving never 
to do another good-natured action as long as he 
lived. 

As for the neophyte, he could not be blamed for 
screaming and kicking against the new existence he 
was entering, if the instinct of genius gave him any 
hint of it. Between the font of St. Mary's and the 
bier at St. Ildefonso's there was scarcely an hour of 
joy waiting him in his long life, except that which 
comes from noble and earnest work. 

His youth was passed in the shabby privation of 
a poor gentleman's house ; his early talents attracted 
the attention of my Lord Aquaviva, the papal Legate, 
who took him back to Eome in his service ; but the 
high-spirited youth soon left the inglorious ease of 
the Cardinal's house to enlist as a private soldier in 
the sea- war against the Turk. He fought bravely 
at Lepanto, where he was three times wounded and 
his left hand crippled. Going home for promotion, 
loaded with praise and kind letters from the gener- 
ous bastard, Don Juan of Austria, the true son of 
the Emperor Charles and pretty Barbara Blumberg, 
he was captured with his brother by the Moors, and 
passed five miserable years in slavery, never for one 
instant submitting to his lot, but wearying his hos- 
tile fate with constant struggles. He headed a dozen 
attempts at flight or insurrection, and yet his thrifty 
owners would not kill him. They thought a man 
who bore letters from a prince, and who continued 



296 CASTILIAN DAYS, 

cock of his walk through years of servitude, would 
one clay bring a round ransom. At last the tardy 
day of his redemption came, but not from the cold- 
hearted tyrant he had so nobly served. The matter 
was presented to him by Cervantes's comrades, but 
he would do nothing. So that Don Eoderick sold 
his estate and his sisters sacrificed their dowry to 
buy the freedom of the captive brothers. 

They came back to Spain still young enough to 
he fond of glory, and simple-hearted enough to be- 
lieve in the justice of the great. They immediately 
joined the army and served in the war with Portu- 
gal. The elder brother made his way and got some 
little promotion, but Miguel got married and dis- 
charged, and wrote verses and plays, and took a 
small office in Seville, and moved with the Court to 
Yalladolid ; and kept Lis accounts badly, and was 
too honest to steal, and so got into jail, and grew 
every year poorer and wittier and better ; he was a 
public amanuensis, a business agent, a sub-tax 
gatherer, — anything to keep his lean larder gar- 
nished with scant ammunition against the wolf 
hunger. In these few lines you have, the pitiful 
story of the life of the greatest of Spaniards, up to 
his return to Madrid in 1606, when he was nearly 
sixty years old. 

From this point his history becomes clearer and 
more connected up to the time of his death. He 
lived in the new-built suburb, erected on the site of 



THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES. 297 

the gardens of the Duke of Lerma, first minister 
and favorite of Philip III. It was a quarter much 
affected by artists and men of letters, and equally 
so by ecclesiastics. The names of the streets indi- 
cate the traditions of piety and art that still hallow 
the neighborhood. Jesus Street leads you into the 
street of Lope de Yega. Quevedo and Saint Augus- 
tine run side by side. In the same neighborhood 
are the streets called Cervantes, Saint Mary, and 
Saint Joseph, and just round the corner are the 
Magdalen and the Love-of-God. The actors and 
artists of that day were pious and devout madcaps. 
They did not abound in morality, but they had of 
religion enough and to spare. Many of them were 
members of religious orders, and it is this fact which 
has procured us such accurate records of their his- 
tory. All the events in the daily life of the relig- 
ious establishments were carefully recorded, and the 
manuscript archives of the convents and brother- 
hood of that period are rich in materials for the 
biographer. 

There was a special reason for the sudden rise of 
religious brotherhoods among the laity. The great 
schism of England had been fully completed under 
Elizabeth. The devout heart of Spain was bursting 
under this wrong, and they could think of no way 
to avenge it. They would fain have roasted the 
whole heretical island, but the memory of the 
Armada was fresh in men's minds, and the great 

13* 



293 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Philip was dead. There were not enough heretics 
in Spain to make it worth while to waste time in 
hunting them. Philip could say as Narvaez, on his 
death-bed, said to his confessor who urged him to 
forgive his enemies, " Bless your heart, I have none. 
I have killed them all." To ease their pious hearts, 
they formed confraternities all over Spain, for the 
worship of the Host. They called themselves " Un- 
worthy Slaves of the Most Holy Sacrament." These 
grew at once very popular in all classes. Artisans 
rushed in, and wasted half their working days in pro- 
cessions and meetings. The severe Suarez de Fig- 
ueroa speaks savagely of the crowd of Narcissuses 
and petite maitres (a word which is delicious in its 
Spanish dress of petimetres) who entered the congre- 
gations simply to nutter about the processions in brave 
raiment, to be admired of the multitude. But there 
were other more serious members, — the politicians 
who joined to stand well with the bigot court, and 
the devout believers who found comfort and edifi- 
cation in worship. Of this latter class was Miguel 
de Cervantes Saavedra, who joined the Brotherhood 
in the street of the Olivar in 1609. He was now 
sixty-two years old, and somewhat infirm, — a time, 
as he said, when a man's salvation is no joke. 
From this period to the day of his death he seemed 
to be laboring, after the fashion of the age, to fortify 
his standing in the other world. He adopted the 
habit of the Franciscans in Alcala in 1613, and 



THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES. 299 

formally professed in the Third Order in 1616, three 
weeks before his death. 

There are those who find the mirth and fun of his 
later works so inconsistent with these ascetic pro- 
fessions, that they have been led to believe Cervan- 
tes a bit of a hypocrite. But we cannot agree with 
such. Literature was at that time a diversion of 
the great, and the chief aim of the writer was to 
amuse. The best opinion of scholars now is that 
Rabelais, whose genius illustrated the preceding 
century, was a man of serious and severe life, whose 
gaulish crudeness of style and brilliant wit have 
been the cause of all the fables that distort his per- 
sonal history. No one can read attentively even the 
Quixote without seeing how powerful an influence 
was exerted by his religion even upon the noble and 
kindly soul of Cervantes. He was a blind bigot 
and a devoted royalist, like all the rest. The mean 
neglect of the Court never caused his stanch 
loyalty to swerve. The expulsion of the Moors, the 
crowning crime and madness of the reign of Philip 
III., found in him a hearty advocate and defender. 
Non facit monachum cucullus, — it was not his hood 
and girdle that made him a monk; he was thoroughly 
saturated with their spirit before he put them on. 
But he was the noblest courtier and the kindliest 
bigot that ever flattered or persecuted. 

In 1610, the Count of Lemos, who had in his 
grand and distant way patronized our poet, was 



300 CASTILIAN BAYS", 

appointed Viceroy of Naples, and took with him to 
his kingdom a brilliant following of Spanish wits 
and scholars. He refused the petition of the great- 
est of them all, however, and to soften the blow 
gave him a small pension, which he continued 
during the rest of Cervantes's life. It was a mere 
pittance, a bone thrown to an old hound, but he 
took it and gnawed it with a gratitude more gener- 
ous than the gift. From this time forth all his 
works were dedicated" to the Lord of Lemos, and 
they form a garland more brilliant and enduring 
than the crown of the Spains. Oidy kind words to 
disguised fairies have ever been so munificently re- 
paid, as this young noble's pension to the old 
genius. 

It certainly eased somewhat his declining years. 
Relieving him from - the necessity of earning his 
daily crust, it gaA r e him leisure to complete and 
bring out in rapid succession the works which have 
made him immortal. He had published the first 
part of Don Quixote in the midst of his hungry 
poverty at Yalladolid in 1605. He was then fifty- 
eight, and all his works that survive are posterior 
to that date. He built his monument from the 
ground up, in his old age. The Persiles and Sigis- 
munda, the Exemplary Novels, and that most mas- 
terly and perfect work, the Second Part of Quixote, 
were written by the flickering glimmer of a life 
burnt out. 



THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES 301 

It would be incorrect to infer that the scanty dole 
of his patron sustained him in comfort. Nothing 
more clearly proves his straitened circumstances 
than his frequent change of lodgings. Old men do 
not move for the love of variety. \Ye have traced 
him through six streets in the last four years of his 
life. But a touching fact is that they are all in the 
same quarter. It is understood that his natural 
daughter and only child, Isabel de Saavedra, entered 
the Convent of the Trinitarian nuns in the street of 
Cantarranas — Singing Frogs — at some date un- 
known. All the shifting and chanoing which Cer- 
vantes made in these embarrassed years are within 
a small half-circle, whose centre is his grave and the 
cell of his child. He fluttered about that little 
convent like a gaunt old eagle about the cage that 
guards his callow young. 

Like Albert Diirer, like Raphael and Vandyke, he 
painted his own portrait at this time with a force 
and vigor of touch which leaves little to the imagi- 
nation. As few people ever read the Exemplary 
Novels, — more is the pity — I will translate this 
passage from the Prologue : — 

" He whom you see there with the aquiline face, 
chestnut hair, a smooth and open brow, merry eyes, 
a nose curved but well proportioned, a beard of 
silver which twenty years ago was of gold, long 
mustaches, a small mouth, not too full of teeth, 
seeing he has but six, and these in bad condition, a 



302 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

form of middle height, a lively color, rather fair 
than brown, somewhat round-shouldered and not 
too light on his feet ; this is the face of the author 
of Galatea and of Don Quixote de la Mancha, of 
him who made the Voyage to Parnassus, and other 
works which are straying about without the name 
of the owner: he is commonly called Miguel de 
Cervantes Saavedra." 

There were, after all, compensations in this even- 
ing of life. As long as his dropsy would let him, 
he climbed the hilly street of the Olivar to say his . 
prayers in the little oratory. He passed many a 
cheerful hour of gossip with mother Francisca 
Eomero, the Independent Superior of the Trinita- 
rian Convent, until the time when the Supreme 
Council, jealous of the freedom of the good lady's 
life, walled up the door which led from her house 
to her convent and cut her off from her nuns. He 
sometimes dropped into the studios of Carducho 
and Caxes, and one of them made a sketch of him 
one fortunate day. He was friends with many of 
the easy-going Bohemians who swarmed in the 
quarter, — Cristobal de Mesa, Quevedo, and Men- 
doza, whose writings, Don Miguel says, are distin- 
guished by the absence of all that would bring a 
" blush to the cheek of a young person," 

" Por graves, puros, castos y excelentes." 

In the same street where Cervantes lived and died 



THE CEADLE AND GEAVE OF CEEVANTES. 303 

the great Lope de Yega passed his edifying old age. 
This phenomenon of incredible fecundity is one of 
the mysteries of that time. Few men of letters 
have ever won so marvellous a success in their own 
lives, few have been so little read after death. The 
inscription on Lope's house records that he is the 
author of two thousand comedies and twenty-one 
million of verses. Making all possible deductions 
for Spanish exaggeration, it must still be admitted 
that his activity and fertility of genius was pro- 
digious. In those days a play was rarely acted 
more than two or three times, and he wrote nearly 
all that were produced in Spain. He had driven 
all competitors from the scene. Cervantes, when he 
published his collection of plays, admitted the im- 
possibility of getting a hearing in the theatre while 
this " monster of nature" existed. There was a 
courteous acquaintance between the two great 
poets. They sometimes wrote sonnets to each 
other, and often met in the same oratories. But 
a grand seigneur like Frey Lope could not afford to 
be intimate with a shabby genius like brother 
Miguel. In his inmost heart he thought Don 
Quixote rather low, and wondered what people 
could see in it. Cervantes, recognizing the great 
gifts of De Vega, and, generously giving him his 
full meed of praise, saw with clearer insight than 
any man of his time that this deluge of prodigal 
and facile genius would desolate rather than fructify 



304 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



the drama oi Spain. What a contrast in character 
and destiny between our dilapidated poet and his 
brilliant neighbor across the way ! The one rich, 
magnificent, the poet of princes and a prince among 
poets, the " Phoenix of Spanish Genius," in whose 
ashes there is no flame of resurrection ; the other, 
hounded through life by unmerciful disaster, and 
using the brief respite of age to achieve an en- 
during renown; the one, with his twenty millions 
of verses, has a great name in the history of litera- 
ture ; but the other, with his volume you can carry 
in your pocket, has caused the world to call the 
Castilian tongue the language of Cervantes. We 
will not decide which lot is the more enviable. But 
it seems a poet must choose. We have the high 
authority of Sancho for saying, — 

" Para dar y tener 
Seso ha menester." 

He is a bright boy who can eat his cake and have it. 
In some incidents of the closing scenes of these 
memorable lives there is a curious parallelism. Lope 
de Vega and Cervantes lived and died in the same 
street, now called the Calle de Cervantes, and were 
buried in the same convent of the street now called 
Calle de Lope de Vega. In this convent each had 
placed a beloved daughter, the pledge of an early 
and unlawful passion. Isabel de Saavedra, the 
child of sin and poverty, was so ignorant she could 
not sign her name; while Lope's daughter, the 







THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES. 305 

lovely and gifted Marcela de Carpio, was rich in 
the genius of her father and the beauty of her 
mother, the high-born Maria de Lujan. Cervantes's 
child glided from obscurity to oblivion no one knew 
when, and the name she assumed with her spiritual 
vows is lost to tradition. But the mystic espousals 
of the sister Marcela de San Felix to the eldest son 
of God — the audacious phrase is of the father and 
priest Frey Lope — was celebrated with princely 
pomp and luxury; grandees of Spain were her 
sponsors ; the streets were invaded with carriages 
from the palace, the verses of the dramatist were 
sung in the service by the Court tenor Florian, 
called the " Canary of Heaven " ; and the event 
celebrated in endless rhymes by the genteel poets 
of the period. 

Earely has a lovelier sacrifice been offered on the 
altar of superstition. The father, who had been 
married twice before he entered the priesthood, and 
who had seen the folly of errant loves without num- 
ber, twitters in the most innocent way about the 
beauty and the charm of his child, without one 
thought of the crime of quenching in the gloom of 
the cloister the light of that rich young life. After 
the lapse of more than two centuries we know bet- 
ter than he what the world lost by that life-long 
imprisonment. The Marquis of Molins, Director 
of the Spanish Academy, was shown by the ladies 
of the convent in this year of 1870 a volume of 






306 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

manuscript poems from the hand of Sor Marcela, 
which prove her to have been one of the most vigorous 
and original poets of the time. They are chiefly mys- 
tical and ecstatic, and full of the refined and spirit- 
ual voluptuousness of a devout young heart whose 
pulsations had never learned to beat for earthly ob- 
jects. M. de Molins is preparing a volume of these 
manuscripts ; but I am glad to present one of the 
seguidillas here, as an illustration of the tender and 
ardent fantasies of virginal passion this Christian 
Sappho embroidered upon the theme of her wasted 
prayers : — 

" Let them say to my Lover 
That here I lie ! 
The thing of his pleasure, 
His slave am I. 

Say that I seek him 

Only for love, 
And welcome are tortures 

My passion to prove. 

" Love giving gifts 

Is suspicious and cold ; 
I have all, my Beloved, 
When thee I hold. 

" Hope and devotion 
The good may gain, 
I am but worthy 
Of passion and pain. 



THE CEADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES. 307 

"So noble a Lord 

None serves in vain, — 
For the pay of my love 
Is my love's sweet pain. 

" I love thee, to love thee, 
No more I desire, 
By faith is nourished 
My love's strong fire. 

" I kiss thy hands 

"When I feel their blows, 
In the place of caresses 
Thou givest me woes. 

" But in thy chastising 
Is joy and peace, 
Master and Love, 

Let thy blows not cease ! 

" Thy beauty, Beloved, 
"With scorn is rife ! 
But I know that thou lovest me, 
Better than life. 

" And because thou lovest me, 
Lover of mine, 
Death can but make me 
Utterly thine ! 

" I die with longing 
Thy face to see ; 
Ah ! sweet is the anguish 
Of death to me ! " 

This is a long digression, but it will be forgiven 
by those who feel how much of beautiful and 



308 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

pathetic there is in the memory of this mute 
nightingale dying with her passionate music all 
unheard in the silence and shadows. It is to me 
the most purely poetic association that clings about 
the crave of Cervantes. 

This vein of mysticism in religion had been made 
popular by the recent canonization of Saint Theresa, 
the ecstatic nun of Avila. In the ceremonies that 
celebrated this event there were three prizes award- 
ed for odes to the new saint. Lope de Yega was 
chairman of the committee of award, and Cervantes 
was one of the competitors. The prizes it must be 
admitted were very tempting : first, a silver pitcher ; 
second, eight yards of camlet ; and third, a pair of 
silk stockings. We hope Cervantes's poem was not 
the best. We would rather see him carry home the 
stuff for a new cloak and pourpoint, or even those 
very attractive silk stockings for his shrunk shank, 
than that silver pitcher which he was too Castilian 
ever to turn to any sensible use. The poems are 
published in a compendium of the time, without 
indicating the successful ones ; and that of Cer- 
vantes contained these lines, which would seem 
hazardous in this colder age, but which then were 
greatly admired : — 

" Breaking all bolts and bars, 
Comes the Divine One, sailing from the stars, 

Full in thy sight to dwell : 
And those who seek him, shortening the road 



THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES. 309 

Come to thy blest abode, 
And find him in thy heart or in thy cell." 

The anti-climax is the poet's, and not mine. 

He knew he was nearing his end, but worked 
desperately to retrieve the lost years of his youth, 
and leave the world some testimony of his powers. 
He was able to finish and publish the Second Part 
of Quixote, and to give the last touches of the file 
to his favorite work, the long-pondered and cher- 
ished Persiles. This, he assures Count Lemos, will 
be either the best or the worst work ever produced by 
mortal man, and he quickly adds that it will not be 
the worst. The terrible disease gains upon him, 
laying its cold hand on his heart. He feels the 
pulsations growing slower, but bates no jot of his 
cheerful philosophy. " With one foot in the stirrup," 
he writes a last farewell of noble gratitude to the vice- 
roy of Naples. He makes his will, commanding that 
his body be laid in the Convent of the Trinitarians. 
He had fixed his departure for Sunday, the 17th of 
April, but waited six days for Shakespeare, and the 
two greatest souls of that age went into the unknown 
together, on the 23d of April, 1616. 

The burial of Cervantes was as humble as his 
christening. His bier was borne on the shoulders 
of four brethren of his order. The upper half of 
the coffin-lid was open and displayed the sharpened 
features to the few who cared to see them : his right 
hand grasped a crucifix with the grip of a soldier. 



310 CASTTLIAN DAYS. 

Behind the grating was a sobbing nnn whose name 
in the world was Isabel de Saavedra. But there was 
no scenic effort or display, such as a few years later 
in that same spot witnessed the laying away of the 
mortal part of Vega-Carpio. This is the last of Cer- 
vantes upon earth. He had fought a good fight. A 
long life had been devoted to his country's service. 
In his youth he had poured out his blood, and dragged 
the chains of captivity. In his age he had accom- 
plished a work which folds in with Spanish fame 
the orb of the world. But he was laid in his grave 
like a pauper, and the spot where he lay was quickly 
forgotten. At that very hour a vast multitude was 
assisting at what the polished academician calls a 
" more solemn ceremony," the bearing of the Virgin 
of the Atocha to the Convent of San Domingo el 
Real, to see if peradventure pleased by the airing, 
she would send rain to the parching fields. 

The world speedily did justice to his name. 
Even before his death it had begun. The gentle- 
men of the French embassy who came to Madrid 
in 1615 to arrange the royal marriages asked the 
chaplain of the Archbishop of Toledo in his first 
visit many questions of Miguel Cervantes. The 
chaplain happened to be a friend of the poet, and so 
replied, " I know him. He is old, a soldier, a gen- 
tleman, and poor." At which they wondered greatly. 
But after a while, when the whole civilized world 
had translated and knew the Quixote by heart, the 



THE CRADLE AND GRAVE OF CERVANTES. 311 

Spaniards began to be proud of the genius they had 
neglected and despised. They quote with a certain 
fatuity the eulogy of Montesquieu, who says it is the 
only book they have ; " a proposition " which Nav- 
arrete considers " inexact," and we agree with Nav- 
arrete. He has written a good book himself. The 
Spaniards have very frankly accepted the judgment 
of the world, and although they do not read Cervan- 
tes much, they admire him greatly, and talk about 
him more than is amusing. The Spanish Academy 
has set up a pretty mural tablet on the facade of the 
convent which shelters the tired bones of the un- 
lucky immortal, enjoying now their first and only 
repose. In the Plaza of the Cortes a fine bronze 
statue stands facing the Prado, catching on his chis- 
elled curls and forehead the first rays of morning 
that leap over the hill of the Eetiro. It is a well- 
poised, energetic, chivalrous figure, and Mr. Ger- 
mond de Lavigne has criticised it as having more of 
the sabreur than the savant. The objection does 
not seem well founded. It is not pleasant for the 
world to be continually reminded of its meannesses. 
We do not want to see Cervantes's days of poverty 
and struggle eternized in statues. We know that 
he always looked back with fondness on his cam- 
paigning days, and even in his decrepit age he called 
Lims M a soldier. If there were any period in that 
troubled history that could be called happy, surely 
it was the time when he had youth and valor and 



312 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

hope as the companions of his toil. It would have 
been a precious consolation to his cheerless age to 
dream that he could stand in bronze, as we hope he 
may stand for centuries, in the unchanging bloom 
of manhood, with the cloak and sword of a gentle- 
man and soldier, bathing his Olympian brow forever 
in the light of all the mornings, and gazing, at 
evening, at the rosy reflex flushing the east, — the 
memory of the day and the promise of the dawn. 



-r 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 313 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE COETES. 

Any one entering the Session Chamber of the 
Constituent Cortes, at Madrid, on the night of the 
19th of March, 1870, would have observed a state 
of anxious interest very different from the usual 
listlessness of that body. For a week or two be- 
fore, the Budget had been under discussion. The 
galleries were deserted. The hall showed a vast 
desert of red-plush benches. A half-dozen con- 
scientious members, with a taste for figures, cried 
in the wilderness, where there was no one to listen 
but the reporters. Spanish finances are not a cheer- 
ful subject, especially to Spaniards. So while these 
most important matters were under discussion, the 
members lounged in the lobbies, and gave them- 
selves up to their cigarettes, and the idle public 
shunned the tribunes, as if the red and yellow 
banner of the Spains that waved above the marble 
portico were a hospital flag. 

But on this night the galleries were crammed. 
The members were all in their places. The gas- 
light danced merrily on the polished skulls. I have 
never seen so remarkable a disproportion between 
gray hairs and bare pates as in this assembly. There 

14 



314 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

are scarcely half a dozen white heads in the house, 
while a large majority are bald. This rapid in- 
crease of calvity is one of the most curious symp- 
toms of the unnatural life of our day. Formerly a 
hairless head was a phenomenon. The poet men- 
tions this feature of Uncle Ned as a striking proof 
of his extreme age. A king of France who was de- 
ficient in chevelure passed into history as Charles the 
Bald. But now half the young bucks in a Parisian 
cotillon go spinning about the room bareheaded as 
dancing dervishes. In fact, wearing hair is getting 
to be considered in the gay world as quaint and 
rococo. The billiard-ball is the type of the modish 
sconce of the period. C'est mieux porte, says the 
languid swell of Sardou. This is perhaps one effect 
of the club life and cafe life of the time, — the turn- 
ing of night into day, — burning the candle of life 
at both ends and whittling at the middle. Nowhere 
is this persecution of the very principle of life car- 
ried farther than in Spain. The frugality of the 
Spaniards only aggravates the evil. I believe these 
long nights in the crowded cafes, passed in smoking 
countless cigarettes and drinking seas of cheap and 
mild slops, are more deteriorating to the nervous 
system than the mad, wild sprees of the American 
frontiersmen. 

The Hall of Sessions is a very pretty semicircular 
room, the seats of the members being arranged in a 
half-amphitheatre facing the President's desk. To 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE COETES. 315 

the left of the President sit the irreconcilable Repub- 
licans, next to them the Democrats, then the Carl- 
ists and the Union Liberals, and finally, on the ex- 
treme right heel of the curving horseshoe, the 
Progresistas and the Blue Bench of the Ministers. 

The Ministerial Bench is so full to-night that you 
cannot see the blue velvet. At its head sits a slight, 
dark man, with a grave, thin-whiskered face and 
serious black clothes, looking, as an observing friend 
of mine once said, " like a pious and sympathizing 
undertaker." He holds in his dark-gloved hands a 
little black-and-silver cane, with which he thought- 
fully taps his neat and glossy boot. The whole 
manner and air of the man is sober and clerical. 
Bien fol est qui dy fie. This is the President of the 
Council, Minister of War, Captain-General of the 
armies of Spain, the Count of Reus, the Marquis 
of Castillejos, Don Juan Prim, in short. A soldier, 
conspirator, diplomatist, and born ruler ; a Crom- 
well without convictions ; a dictator who hides his 
power; a Warwick who mars kings as tranquilly 
as he makes them. We shall see more of him 
before the evening is over, much more before the 
year ends. 

Next to Marshal Prim is Admiral Topete, the 
brave and magnanimous soldier who opened to the 
exiled generals the gates of Spain, and made the 
Revolution possible. It was the senseless outrage 
perpetrated upon the generals of the Union Liberal, 



■316 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

arresting and exiling them to the Canaries, which 
drove that party at last into open rebellion. When, 
still later, the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier 
were sent out of Spain, Admiral Topete was charged 
with the duty of conveying them to Portugal. He 
came back to his post at Cadiz the determined 
enemy of the late government and the earnest 
partisan of Montpensier. In this scandalous town 
improper motives are of course attributed to all 
public men. But it is enough to look in the frank, 
bluff face of Topete, to see that he is a man much 
more easily influenced by generous impulses than 
by any hope of gain. He is no politician. He has 
no clear revolutionary perceptions. He is a bigoted 
adherent of the Church. But he saw the country 
dishonored by its profligate rulers. He saw decent 
citizens outraged and banished by the caprice of 
power. He went with his whole soul into the 
conspiracy that was to right this wrong, not looking 
far beyond his honest and chivalrous nose. The 
conspiracy was conducted by Prim with wonderful 
secrecy and skill ; and as if fortune had grown tired 
of baffling him, the most remarkable luck favored 
all his combinations. He and Serrano and Dulce, 
from their far distant exiles, arrived the same night 
on board Topete's flag-ship in the Bay of Cadiz, and 
the next morning the band that played the forbidden 
Hymn of Biego on the deck of the Saragossa crum- 
bled the Bourbon dynasty with its lively vibrations. 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 317 

Earns' horns are as good as rifled cannon, when the 
walls are ready to fall. 

Topete has preserved his consistency unspotted 
ever since. He left the Cabinet when the candida- 
ture of the Duke of Genoa was resolved upon, and 
only returned upon the express provision that he 
came in as an adherent of Montpensier. He has 
refused all favors, decorations, or promotions. He 
has fought all the advances which have been made 
in the way of religious liberty, and proved himself 
on all occasions a true friend, a true Catholic, and 
the most honest and awkward of politicians. The 
caricaturists are especially fond of him, usually 
representing him as a jolly Jack Tar, with tarpaulin 
and portentous shirt-collars, and a vast spread of 
white duck over the stern sheets. La Flaea recent- 
ly had an irresistible sketch, representing the gal- 
lant Admiral as an Asturian nurse with a dull baby 
lying in her capacious bosom, bearing an absurd un- 
likeness to the Duke of Montpensier. 

AVe have dwelt inordinately upon Topete, but he 
is well worth knowing, and you will see him no more 
after to-night on the Banco Azul. 

Next to him a burly frame, crowned by a round- 
cropped bullet head lighted up by brilliant, sunken 
eyes ; the face and voice and manner of the waggish 
Andalusian. This is the Minister of the Interior ; 
the man who holds in his hand the thrilling heart- 
strings of all Spain, who feels the pulse of the peo- 



318 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

pie as lie used to touch the throbbing wrist of a 
patient ; for Don Nicolas Maria Eivero has been 
doctor and lawyer and orator before, through the 
school of conspiracy, he was graduated as states- 
man. He is a brilliant and impressive talker, and 
was the idol of the advanced democracy until suc- 
cess and office had exercised upon him their chasten- 
ing influence. He led the poll in Madrid when 
elected Deputy, leaving behind him those Dii 
majores of the Eevolution, Prim and Serrano. He 
is a hearty and generous host, and hates a dull 
table. An invitation from him is never declined. 
What a culinary symphony his dinners are, and 
what exquisite appreciation has presided over the 
provision of his cellar! Besides the best wines 
from beyond the Pyrenees, you find in their highest 
perfection on his table the native wines of Spain, 
the Montilla, with its delicate insinuation of creo- 
sote, and the wonderful old Tio Pepe Amontillado, 
with its downright assertion of ether; and, better 
than these tours de force of dryness, the full-bodied, 
rich-flavored vintages of Jerez and Malaga. 

There is still so much good stuff in Piivero, that 
it seems a pity the Eepublicans have lost him. They 
are very bitter upon him, because they once valued 
him so highly. He has, in spite of his place and 
his daily acts, a seemingly genuine regard for law 
and justice. In the autumn of 1869, when the 
constitutional guaranties had been suspended, Sa- 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 319 

gasta, the familiar spirit and time damnee of Prim, 
who then filled the chair of the Gobernacion, planned 
the arrest of all the Eepublican members. Eivero, 
then President of the Cortes, getting wind of this, 
went in a whirling rage to Prim and denounced the 
measure roundly as a folly and a crime, and de- 
manded the revocation of the order. Prim shrugged 
his narrow shoulders and said : " Sagasta thinks it 
is necessary. Go and talk to him." To Sagasta 
posted Eivero, and fired his volley at him. The 

venomous Minister talked back. "D them, 

they deserve it. Some of them are plotting treason. 
Others would if they dared. They are all a worth- 
less lot any how. It will do them no harm to pass 
a week or two in jail." There was nothing to be 
done with so airy a demon as this. Eivero went 
back to Prim, and by sheer screaming and bullying 
had the matter called up before the Council. In 
the mean time he and Martos put the threatened 
men on their guard, and not a Eepublican slept in 
his house that night. They were distributed around 
among personal and political friends, and enemies, 
also ; for the true Spaniard never refuses the shelter 
he may have to ask to-morrow. The Minister took 
no deputies that night, and the next morning Eivero 
went to the Council, his neck clothed with thunder. 
They say he smashed the top of a mahogany table 
with the fury of his expounding. He threatened 
to call the Cortes together and resign in full session, 



320 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

giving his reasons. The Ministry yielded, — prob- 
ably to save the furniture, — and the order was re- 
voked, to the undoubted disgust of Mr. Sagasta, who 
felt, we may imagine, as a cat does when she sees a 
fat mouse playing about the floor, and dares not de- 
vour him for fear of waking the bulldog, asleep with 
his dangerous muzzle between his paws. 

Sagasta is now sitting beside Eivero. In the re- 
cent new shuffle of the court cards he was trans- 
ferred from the Interior to Foreign Affairs, — sent 
into exile, as he calls it. This has, it is said, still 
further soured a temper which was not deficient in 
acidity before. He is thought to be drifting away 
from Prim into the ranks of the reactionary poli- 
ticians. He has a dark wrinkled face, small bright 
eyes, the smile and the scowl of Mephistopheles. 
He is a most vigorous and energetic speaker, but so 
aggressive and pungent in his style that he rarely 
fails to raise a tempest in the languid house when 
he speaks at any length. He has a hearty contempt 
for the people and a firm reliance upon himself, — 
two important elements of success for a Latin 
statesman. 

Figuerola, the Minister of Finance, and Echega- 
ray, the Minister of Fomento, or Public Works, sit 
side by side; both tall and thin, both spectacled, 
both bald, both men of great learning and liberal 
tendencies. They were savans, lecturers, essay- 
ists before the Eevolution, and often seem to re- 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. '321 

gret the quiet of their libraries, in these stormy 
scenes. 

Mr. Montero Rios, the progressive and enlightened 
Minister of Grace and Justice, comes next, and the 
tale of Ministers is completed by the Colonial Secre- 
tary, Mr. Becerra, a short, stocky, silent man, who 
used to be a great orator of the faubourg and barri- 
cade, but has now come to take what he calls more 
serious views of political life. He is, also, a new 
man in office. He was a schoolmaster. He is a 
man of great physical nerve. He can snuff a can- 
dle at ten paces, firing backward over his shoulder. 
The Republicans call him a renegade, the aristoc- 
racy call him a parvenu. He has an ill-regulated 
habit of telling the truth sometimes, and this will, 
in the end, cost him his place. 

This is a good night to see the notabilities of the 
situation. Fully two thirds of the members elect 
are in their seats, which is a most unusual propor- 
tion. Many of the deputies never occupy their 
seats. Some are attending to their affairs in dis- 
tant provinces, some are in exile, and some in pris- 
on ; for the life of a Spanish patriot is subject to 
both of these accidents. But of those who can 
come, few are away to-night. 

On the extreme left of the chamber is a young 
face that bears an unmistakable seal of distinction. 
It reminds you instantly of Chantrey's bust of the 
greatest of the sons of men. The same pure oval 

14* U 



322 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

outline, the arched eyebrows, the piled-up dome of 
forehead stretching outward from the eyes, until the 
glossy black hair, seeing the hopelessness of dis- 
puting the field, has retired discouraged to the back 
of the head. This is Emilio Castelar, the inspired 
tribune of Spain. This people is so given to exag- 
gerated phases of compliment, that the highest-col- 
ored adjectives have lost their power. They have 
exhausted their lexicons in speaking of Castelar, 
but in this instance I would be inclined to say that 
exaggeration was wellnigh impossible. It is true 
that his speech does not move with the powerful 
convincing momentum of the greatest English and 
American orators. It is possible that its very bril- 
lancy detracts somewhat from its effect upon a legis- 
lative body. When you see a Toledo blade all 
damaskeened with frondage and flowers and stories 
of the gods, you are apt to think it less deadly than 
one glittering in naked blueness from hilt to point. 
Yet the splendid sword is apt to be of the finest 
temper. "Whatever may be said of his enduring 
influence upon legislation, it seems to me there can 
be no difference of opinion in regard to his tran- 
scendent oratorical eifts. There is something almost 
superhuman in the delivery. He is the only man I 
have ever seen who produces, in very truth, those 
astounding effects which I have always thought the 
inventions of poets and the exaggerations of biog- 
raphy. Robertson, speaking of Pitt's oratory, said, 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 323 

"It was not the torrent of Demosthenes, nor the 
splendid conflagration of Tully." This ceases to be 
an unmeaning metaphor when you have heard 
Castelar. His speech is like a torrent in its in- 
conceivable fluency, like a raging fire in its bril- 
liancy of color and terrible energy of passion. 
Never for an instant is the wonderful current of 
declamation checked by the pauses, the hesitations, 
the deliberations that mark all Anglo-Saxon debate. 
An entire oration will be delivered with precisely 
the fluent energy which a veteran actor exhibits in 
his most passionate scenes ; and when you consider 
that this is not conned beforehand, but is struck off 
instantly in the very heat and spasm of utterance, 
it seems little short of inspiration. The most elab- 
orate filing of a fastidious rhetorician could not pro- 
duce phrases of more exquisite harmony, antitheses 
more sharp and shining, metaphors more neatly fit- 
ting, all uttered with a distinct rapidity that makes 
the despair of stenographers. His memory is pro- 
digious and under perfect discipline. He has the 
world's history at his tongue's end. No fact is too 
insignificant to be retained nor too stale to do ser- 
vice. 

His action is also most energetic and impassioned. 
It would be considered redundant in a Teutonic 
country. If you do not understand Spanish, there 
is something almost insane in his gesticulation. I 
remember a French diplomat who came to see him, 



324 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



in one of his happiest clays, and who, after looking 
intently at the orator for a half-hour trying to see 
what he was saying, said at last in an injured tone, 
" Mais ! c'est un polichinelle, celui la." It had not 
occurred to me that he had made a gesture. The 
whole man was talking from his head to his feet. 

Finally, as we cannot stay even with Castelar all 
night, his greatest and highest claim to our admira- 
tion and regard is that his enormous talents have 
been consistently devoted from boyhood to this hour 
to the cause of political and spiritual freedom. He 
is now only thirty-two years of age, but he was an 
orator at sixteen. He harangued the mobs of 1854 
with a dignity and power that contrasted grotesque- 
ly with his boyish figure and rosy face. During all 
these eventful years he has not for one moment fal- 
tered in his devotion to liberal ideas. In poverty, 
exile, and persecution, as well as amid the intoxi- 
cating fumes of flattery and favor, he has kept his 
faith unsullied. With his great gifts, he might 
command anything from the government, as the 
price of his support. But he preserves his austere 
independence, living solely upon his literary labor 
and his modest salary as Professor of History in the 
University. 

Beside him is Figueras, the Parliamentary leader 
of the Republicans, a tall, large-framed man, with a 
look of lazy power. He is a fine lawyer, an able 
and ready debater, and a man of great energy of 






A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 325 

character. He is, perhaps, more regarded and re- 
spected by the monarchical side of the house than 
any other Bepublican. Pi y Margall is another 
strong and hard hitter of the left. He has a hoarse, 
husky voice, a ragged and grizzled "beard, and grave, 
ascetic-looking square spectacles. If you met him 
in Broadway you would call him a professor of 
mathematics in a young and unsuccessful Univer- 
salist college. 

The centre of the hall is occupied by the deputies 
of the Liberal Union. Immediately under the 
clock sits Bios Bosas, the leading orator of that 
party, an iron-gray man of middle age, an energetic 
and effective speaker ; Silvela, a tall, handsome, at- 
torney-like person, reposing from the fatigues of 
the afternoon ; he has made a great speech to-day, 
and may have to make another before midnight ; 
Juan Yalera, the courtly Academician ; Lopez de 
Ayala, who has had such success as a poet and such 
a failure as a statesman, and who looks like the 
romantic Spaniards of young ladies' sketch-books. 
Swinging farther round the horseshoe, you find the 
compact phalanx of Prim's supporters, the Prog- 
resistas and Monarchical Democrats, now fused into 
one solid organization called Badicals. Among 
them are the generals of the Bevolution, Cordova, 
Izquierdo, and Peralta, and the white-haired veteran 
conspirator Milans del Bosch (say Bosk, if you 
please), who has been in every insurrection since he 



326 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

was a boy. He is a gallant, hearty, prodigal fellow, 
always giving and never gaining, and so was ap- 
proaching an impecnnious old age, when suddenly 
a few weeks ago an old officer whom he only slight- 
ly knew died, like an uncle in a fifth act, and left 
him a large fortune ; and there was not probably a 
man in Madrid who was not glad to hear it. An- 
other noticeable figure is that of Don Pascual Ma- 
doz, the tenacious advocate of the election of Es- 
partero to the crown. I have never seen a man 
who looked so old. He has no hair whatever on 
his face, head, or brows. His pink skull shines like 
varnished parchment. He sits ordinarily with his 
head tipped torpidly over on his breast, as if lost in 
recollections of the time of his contemporary Adri- 
an. But, in fact, he is still an able and vigorous 
politician. Near him lies sprawled over half a 
bench the enormous bulk of Coronel y Ortiz, whom 
you would call fifty from his waist and his gray 
hairs, but who is really but six-and-twenty, barely 
the legal age of a voter in Spain. 

The handsomest man in the house, the enfant 
gate, of the Eadicals, is the young Subsecretary of 
the Interior, who will succeed Becerra as Colonial 
Secretary, Moret y Prendergast. He is six feet 
high, built like a trapeze performer, with a classi- 
cal, clear-cut face ; and like all men of great per- 
sonal beauty, he has the most easy and elegant man- 
ners. He was a comrade and associate of Castelar 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 327 

before the Revolution, out has since given in his 
adhesion to the monarchy, and is one of their most 
ready and brilliant speakers. They usually put him 
into the lists against his eloquent friend. But there 
is no resemblance between the men. Moret pos- 
sesses in the highest degree the Southern fluency 
and ease of diction. His delivery is also most grace- 
ful and pleasing. But he speaks utterly without 
passion or conviction. His talk is all, as Mr. Car- 
lyle would say, " from the teeth outward." A speech 
from him is as clear and easy-gushing as the jet 
from a garden-fountain, full of bright lights and 
prismatic flashes, but it is also as cold and purpose- 
less. 

It will require a moment to explain why there is 
such a gathering of the clans to-night. The bill 
which now occupies the attention of the chamber is 
of the character which your true Spaniard loathes 
and scorns. It is a bill for raising money. Of 
course a parliament of office-holders recognize the 
necessity of the treasury's being filled. But they 
usually prefer to let the Finance Minister have his 
own way about filling it, theirs being the more 
seductive task of emptying it. So that financial 
matters are usually discussed in the inspiring pres- 
ence of empty benches. 

A few days ago Mr. Figuerola, whom his friends 
call the Spanish Necker, because, as Owen Mere- 
dith once observed, it w T as neck or nothing with 



328 CASTILTAK DAYS. 

their treasury, introduced a bill for the relief of the 
government and the agonizing municipal councils, 
authorizing the government to negotiate the bonds 
remaining over, of the loan of 1868, and those lying 
in the Bank of Deposits as security for the payment 
of municipal, individual, and provincial taxes ; and 
also to make an operation of credit upon the mines 
of Almaden and Rio Tinto, and the salt-works of 
Torre Yieja. This was, it is true, a terrible proposi- 
tion, — like a carpenter pawning his tools or a 
lawyer his library; but it was positively nothing 
unusual in Spanish finance. Its whole history con- 
sists in these desperate authorizations, trembling 
always on the brink of bankruptcy. You will find 
in the Diplomatic Correspondence of 1842 a state- 
ment of a battle wonderfully like the one we are to 
witness here to-night. Washington Irving writes 
that the Ministry resolved to take their stand " on 
the great question of financial reform. Calatrava, 
the Minister of Finance, brought forward his budget, 
showing a deficit for 1843 of about twenty millions 
of dollars, to remedy which he proposed, among 
other measures, that the Cortes should authorize the 
government to contract for a loan of thirty millions 
of dollars, hypothecating all the revenues and con- 
tributions of the state." 

This is the third time Mr. Figuerola has come 
before the Cortes asking them to bandage their eyes 
and give him the keys of the national wealth. In 






A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 329 

the first days of the Bevolution he asked to he au- 
thorized to contract a loan, on his own terms, for 
fifty million dollars. This was to he the last. 
Shortly afterwards another demand was made for 
an operation on tobacco and other important rev- 
enues. This was also granted. And now, at this 
alarmingly short interval, comes this third summons 
to the nation to roll up its sleeve and he hied, with- 
out explanations. 

The most remarkable feature to foreign eyes, in 
all these authorizations, is that no man in Spain hut 
the Minister of Hacienda knows how much these 
various loans produce. There exists in Paris a sin- 
gular and mysterious corporation called the Bank 
of Paris, which conducts the financial operations of 
the Spanish government. The process is said to he 
this : the government, having obtained its authoriza- 
tion, applies to the Bank of Paris to place the loan. 
It places in the vaults of the Bank a sufficient 
quantity of its own bonds on hand to serve as 
security for the Bank in the operation. The Bank 
puts the loan on the market, and gets its commission. 
It rehypothecates the hypothecated bonds, and gets 
a commission. It buys the bonds on its own ac- 
count, and pays itself a commission for the sale ; it 
sells them again to its own customers, being thus 
forced reluctantly to pocket another commission. To 
sustain the weight of the loan in a dull market, it 
is forced to borrow money from itself at a high rate 



330 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

of interest ; and every such ingenious operation re- 
sults in this self-sacrificing corporation increasing 
its risks and perils in that celestial needle's-eye, by 
the additional bulk of another commission. The 
sum which came to the government from that loan 
of a hundred millions is as profoundly unknown as 
" what song the sirens sang." Some say twenty-six, 
and there are evil tongues that assert that not nine- 
teen millions ever entered the treasury. 

Still, all this is quite regular in Spanish politics, 
and no party hitherto has ever shown a disposition 
to abolish a convenient custom from which each 
profits while in power. But to-night the govern- 
ment is evidently greatly alarmed in regard to the 
passage of the bill. Every available man is in his 
place. The President of the Council has for sev- 
eral days past been using his whole arsenal of per- 
suasion of threats and promises, but not success- 
fully. The opposition is of the most kind and 
courteous character that can be imagined. The 
amendment presented by the Liberal Union, and 
defended to-day in a long and powerful speech by 
Silvela, is apparently as innocent and reasonable as 
possible. It merely provides that the conversion 
of the securities in the Bank of Deposits shall be 
at the option of the municipal councils, and of 
individuals, to whom they belong ; that the mines 
of the state shall not be themselves hypothecated, 
but only their products. 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 331 

It would seem impossible to reject so reasonable 
and moderate a proposition. But the government 
has determined to fight its battle on this amend- 
ment. It has announced that it will make the vote 
a Cabinet question, standing or falling with the bill. 
The Liberal Union, on the contrary, protest that 
nothing is further from their minds than to attack 
the government ; that this is a friendly amendment 
which the government ought to accept, throwing 
over the Minister of Finance if necessary, who is 
leading the country to perdition. This was the 
burden of Silvela's dexterous speech this afternoon. 
It was not a question of confidence in the Ministry ; 
it was a question of prerogative in the Cortes. The 
country had a right to know what was done with 
its money. It could not give up the right of con- 
trol in its own affairs ; the deputies could not con- 
tinue forever throwing the whole national wealth 
into an ever-yawning crater. 

He was answered with great energy by Mr. 
Figuerola, who contended that the condition of the 
country was so critical that the operations for which 
authority was requested must be made solid and at 
once, to save the national credit, and to begin the 
era of financial reform. Euiz Gomez also defended 
the report of the committee, and, evidently fresh 
from the reading of a Congressional Globe of thirty 
or forty years ago, he rebuked Mr. Castelar for his 
apathy in financial matters, informing him that to- 



S32 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

day, in the United States, Adams, Jackson, Clay, 
and Madison are much more interested in questions 
of tariff and slavery compromise than in Michael 
Angelo and the Parthenon. 

The session closed for dinner and cigars, and 
opened again about ten o'clock. There is no longer 
any doubt about the serious nature of the crisis. 
In spite of all the fair words used, the fight is to 
be a final and desperate one. The Liberal Union, 
by adhering to its amendment after the government 
has declared its intention to stand or fall with the 
original bill, has placed itself in opposition. It is 
useless for it to declare that its attitude is friendly, 
and that only considerations of patriotism have 
forced it to take this position. It did the same 
thing when it was in power, and would do it 
again to-morrow. All parties in Spain talk of re- 
trenchment and reform, but all adopt a policy of 
expedients and makeshifts as soon as they are seat- 
ed on the Blue Bench. 

Every one feels that the hollow truce of the last 
year and a half is over ; that the coalition of the 
three parties that made the Bevolution, the Progre- 
sista, the Liberal Union, and the Democrats, is 
nearing its agony. It is a wonder that it has lasted 
so long, surviving the successive shocks of univer- 
sal suffrage, freedom of worship, and the establish- 
ment of individual rights. It seems a marvel to us 
that the same party could so long have contained 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 333 

Martos the abolitionist, and Romero Robledo the 
advocate of slavery, Echegaray the rationalist, and 
Ortiz the ultramontane, men who worship reason, 
and men who worship the Pope, men who insist 
that human rights are above law, and men who be- 
lieve in the divine right of kings. But the power- 
ful cohesion of private and party interests have 
kept them together so far, and it seems as if these 
same exigencies were to sunder them to-night. 

On one side is the government, with its faithful 
cohort of Eadicals ; on the other the Liberal Union, 
the conservative element of the late coalition, which 
has become convinced that it can no longer control 
the policy of the majority, and has therefore ap- 
parently resolved to destroy the majority, and trust 
to its political shrewdness and aptitude to build up 
some advantageous combination from the ruins ; the 
Republicans, who can consistently support the Sil- 
vela amendment, as it merely embodies their own 
principle of parliamentary control ; and the Carlists, 
the partisans of the absolute royal power, who strike 
hands with their enemies purely from opposition to 
the government : a most heterogeneous accidental 
compound, and one on which no parliamentary gov- 
ernment could be founded, if it should succeed in 
overthrowing this Cabinet. 

The session was opened by a speech having no 
reference to the question. Mr. Puig y Llagostera, 
the new deputy from Catalonia, was to have made 



334 CASTILIAN DAYS. 



an interpellation in the afternoon, out was cleverly 
thrown out by the ruling of the President, and his 
speech postponed until the evening. It was a dan- 
gerous experiment for any man to try to gain the 
attention of an assembly in such a state of tense 
expectancy. But this brilliant, wild Catalan feared 
nothing, and, as the result showed, had nothing to 
fear. He made one of the most remarkable speeches, 
in severity, in feverish eloquence, in naive paradox, 
that was ever addressed to an assembly claiming to 
be deliberative. It was an attack upon the govern- 
ment all along the line. "Whatever was, was wrong. 
He is a large manufacturer, employs a great num- 
ber of operatives, and is a man of limited education, 
but great natural talents. He believes, as many 
Catalans do, that Spain cannot exist without a high 
protective tariff. He therefore thinks that Mr. 
Figuerola, who leans toward free trade, is the evil 
genius of the country; and so when young Paul 
Bosch, who is son-in-law to the Minister of Finance, 
came down from Madrid, in the innocence of his 
heart, to be elected deputy, the fiery Catalan entered 
the lists against him, and, supported by Republican 
votes, was elected. He is in no true sense a Repub- 
lican ; it would puzzle him to define his politics. 
He wants food cheap for the benefit of his opera- 
tives, and grain dear for the benefit of farmers. He 
recognizes the difficulties of the problem, and calls 
loudly on the government to solve it. 




A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 335 

I have never seen anything so like Gwynplaine 
in the House of Lords, — this earnest, brilliant, 
honest man, with his whole heart in his words, 
coming up from his fellow-workers, grimed with the 
smoke of his factories, to deliver to the faineant 
gentleman of the Cortes the message of the toilers 
and the sufferers. 

The beginning of his speech was unique. He 
begins by resigning his charge of deputy. He has 
come to give them an hour of candor, and will then 
go back to his people. 

He has not come, he says, to ask the government 
questions about the state of the country. He has 
come to tell them ; — in one word, misery. " Yon, 
my lords Ministers, may think this exaggeration. 
I tell you, while you are sitting comfortably in your 
jewelled palaces, the majority of the Spanish peo- 
ple have no clothes to wear nor bread to eat. 
Among the working classes poverty is becoming 
famine ; in what you call good society, the paupers 
in frock-coats are the majority. Do not judge from 
Madrid, with its four armies, soldiers, office-holders, 
pensioners, and harlots, who all have enough and to 
spare. Go into the provinces and see the people, 
who beg in shame or starve in pride. 

" And to this hungry people Mr. Figuerola says, 
for their consolation, that ' the grass is beginning to 
grow.' For the gentleman of the budget, I doubt 
not that the grass is growing rank and green ; but 



336 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

for the country, Mr. Figuerola, it is the graveyan 
grass that is growing ! " 

He went on to show how the misery of the land 
was due to the bad management of the treasury, 
leaving industry and agriculture without sufficient 
protection. " Tor want of corn-tax the kingdom is 
flooded with the products of the Danube ; and the 
Spanish farmer perishes in poverty among his grain- 
sacks. It is not the blighting winds nor the mould- 
ering rains, farmers of Spain ! that rob you of the 
fruifc of your toil ; it is the law ; that law imposed 
by a school of sciolists, who have never shed one 
drop of sweat in your furrows, but who devour your 
first-fruits ; who spend Spanish money and eat 
foreign bread ; who preach honor for Spaniards and 
profit for strangers." 

Mr. Figuerola in this matter had sinned against 
light and knowledge. The speaker had come from 
Catalonia long ago to warn him, but he would not 
be convinced. "When I showed him how the 
decline of production was leaving a surplus of in- 
telligent labor which would thus be driven into 
emigration, depopulating the farming regions of 
Spain, he answered cynically, ' Let them emigrate : 
we will have seven million Spaniards left.' 

" Why will General Prim make a Cabinet ques- 
tion over a Minister capable of uttering such a 
blasphemy ? If it were not that he throws into the 
balance his great personality, who supposes the 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 337 

majority would vote to fling away the last that 
remains to us of credit and bread, the last rag that 
covers the nakedness of this wretched nation 1 

" The people clamor for economies, but what care 
you for that ? You are more royalist than the king. 
You vote the state more than it asks. You all have 
a cover at the feast. If you eat and do not pay, 
what care you if the people pay and do not eat ? 
Not only in your hall of sessions, but in your 
lobbies and corridors, I am shocked and grieved: 
I seek everywhere for patriotism, and find only an. 
inordinate greed of office." 

At this point the noise and confusion in the hall 
became so great that the orator was compelled to 
pause for a moment in his denunciation. Such lan- 
guage is never heard in a European congress, where 
the most exquisite courtesy of expression always 
characterizes the most heated debates. This Scyth- 
ian oratory was new to the conscript fathers. The 
President intervened and severely rebuked Mr. Puig 
y Llagostera. He went on with renewed vehemence, 
which occasioned renewed tumult, and finally he 
ceased to worry the sensitive office-holders, and re- 
turned to the state of the country. 

Like a true Catalan he had his word to say 
of Cuba, and it was of course in praise of the 
brutal and bloody volunteers, lie despised and 
abhorred all discussion of reform for the colonies, 
and cried, " Perish principles and save the colonies I" 

15 V 



338 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

He thought the interregnum was a source of 
woes unnumbered, and said, " Let us get out of it, at 
any cost, — with Montpensier, with Don Carlos, 
with Prim, with the Devil, if you like, — but be 
quick about it " : which certainly showed a spirit 
above party. He summed up in a few nervous 
words the wants of the country : security for capital, 
labor for the workingman, a field for intelligence, 
development of the public wealth, — this was gov- 
ernment. Less speeches and better laws ; less 
office-seeking and more production ; less clubs and 
more workshops ; less beggars and more bread ; in a 
word, less politics and more government. 

This speech, wild and illogical as it was, pro- 
foundly and disagreeably impressed the house. 
Figuerola, who was reserving his strength for the 
attack in front, refused to meet this flank movement, 
and his friend Echegaray answered for him. He made 
a sensible reply, showing that it was not the func- 
tion of a government to abolish poverty or create 
riches, and that, after all, the picture drawn by Mr. 
Puig was darker than the facts justified. 

To which the Catalan orator rejoined, in a graphic 
metaphor, that no doubt the situation looked very 
bright to those who stood in the radiance of the 
treasury, but far off, in the darkness, the country 
was weeping in misery. 

After this exciting interlude, the Chamber re- 
turned to the evening's serious work. Mr„ Figue- 






A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 339 

rola rose to complete the speech he had begun 
before dinner, and made one of those skilful argu- 
ments that so often confuse the listener, until he 
imagines he is convinced. Although the Minister 
knew his political existence depended upon the 
issue of this night, he was as cool and passionless, 
and as exquisitely courteous in his references to the 
perfect candor, good faith, and patriotism of his 
adversaries, as if it were the weight of Saturn's 
rings that was under discussion. 

He was followed by Eivero, Minister of the Inte- 
rior, who defended the Cabinet in general from the 
vigorous attack made upon them the night before 
by Canovas del Castillo, the sole representative in 
the Chamber of the partisans of the late queen. 
While Eivero is not deficient in those chivalrous 
civilities to opponents, which mark all Spanish 
debate, he is an honest and square adversary, and 
makes a speech which cannot be misunderstood. 
There seems to be a singular affectation among Span- 
ish politicians, of denouncing the status quo; of 
lamenting the evils which exist, and promising 
something better to-morrow. The monarchical depu- 
ties appear to consider it a sort of treason to their 
unknown king to be contented before he comes. 
We hear everywhere and every day jeremiads over 
the interregnum. But the fact is, that Spain has 
rarely had so good a government as this truce of 
monarchy, Eivero is the only member of the gov- 



340 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

ernment who appears to have the pluck to say this. 
To-night, after neatly disposing of Mr. Canovas's 
pretensions to sit in judgment on the government 
of a Ee volution he does not recognize, he goes on 
to say: "Gentlemen, there is one phrase I hear 
continually, - Madrid is tranquil, but the provinces 
are not.' I confess I myself entered the Gober- 
nacion under this impression. But I have not 
encountered — I say it frankly before this assembly 
— any element of disorder which would not be easy 
to destroy completely, with a good administrative 
system, with a loyal and sincere observance of the 
principles contained in the Constitution, with an 
active and vigorous execution of the laws. I be- 
lieve and say this, though this should be the last 
night I should occupy this place ; I believe that 
public order in Spain is by no means so uncertain 
or so easily disturbed as some fear and many pre- 
tend to fear." These are truer and more honest 
words than have often been spoken by a Spanish 
Minister of the Interior. The traditional custom 
has been to magnify the office, to represent the 
people as a dangerous beast, who must be kept 
carefully chained and muzzled. 

Silvela made his closing argument, which was 
chiefly significant for the pleading earnestness with 
which he strove to impress it upon the government 
that his amendment was their best friend, and 
would be the salvation of the Eevolution. This 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 341 

did not create much interest. The deputies were 
growing tired of the long skirmishing. It was now 
after one o'clock. Every one wanted to hear Prim, 
and vote. 

The Marquis of Perales, Vice-President, said, as 
Silvela took his seat, " The President of the Council 
of Ministers has the word." 

Prim slowly rose, holding his eye-glasses in his 
gloved hands. His face was as colorless and im- 
passive as that of a mummy. There was a rustle 
of movement, as the house, now wide awake, bent 
forward to catch his first words. They were full of 
soldierly bluntness : " I am not going to discuss 
this law. I know nothing about these matters, and 
never talk about things I do not understand. I 
have full confidence in the Minister of Hacienda, 
and so believe this law is a good one. This 
opinion is shared by my companions in the govern- 
ment." 

Nothing could be more simple and frank than 
these words ; yet they were deeply pondered and 
perfectly fitted to the occasion. No art could have 
improved them. They at once enlisted the sympa- 
thy of his followers, and set an example of party 
discipline. He continued, expressing his inability 
to understand the cause of this attack from the 
Liberal Union : n I can understand the opposition 
of Mr. Tutau; the Eepublicans desire the fall of 
the present government ; and that of Mr. Muzquiz 



342 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

also, for the Carlists wish the disappearance of this 
Cabinet and this Chamber ; for the same reason I 
was not surprised at the assault of Mr. Canovas." 
Here his voice and manner, which had been as 
mild as an undertaker's, suddenly changed, and he 
said with great dignity and solemnity, turning to 
the Unionist fraction, " But I cannot understand — 
I declare it with the sincerity of an honest man — 
the attitude of the gentlemen of the Liberal Union, 
because, though my distinguished friend, Mr. Silvela, 
has clothed his opposition with beautiful and elegant 
forms, still, opposition, and of the rudest, it is, which 
his Lordship makes, not only to Mr. Figuerola, but 
to the whole government." He continued for some 
time, showing the disorganizing and disastrous 
results that would follow the success of the 
Unionist attack, declaring that the Cabinet would 
immediately resign in a body. He recounted the 
efforts he had made to prevent the rupture; and 
his voice and utterance had something almost 
pathetic as he narrated his fruitless endeavors to 
find some ground for agreement. But as he closed, 
a sort of transformation came over him. He 
seemed to grow several inches taller. He stood 
straight as a column, and his voice rang out like 
a trumpet over the hall : " They present us the 
battle. There remains no more for me to say than, 
Badicals ! defend yourselves ! Let those who love me, 
follow me ! " 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 343 

"What tremendous power there lies in the speech 
of a man of action ! If any deputy but Prim had 
said these words, how coldly they would have fallen ! 
But from him they were so many flashes of light- 
ning. The house was ablaze in a second. The 
Radicals rose, cheering frantically. It was a battle- 
field speech, and had its deeply calculated effect. 
The phalanx was fused into one man. 

As the cheering died away, Topete was seen to 
rise from his seat by Prim and take him by the 
hand in sign of farewell. The gallant sailor uttered 
a word of energetic protest, too low to be heard in 
the tumult, and then passed over to his friends of 
the Liberal Union. It was now their turn to burst 
out in a shout of defiance. They surrounded the 
Admiral, embracing and welcoming him. For some 
minutes this wild agitation reigned in the Chamber. 
There was an excited tremor in the voice and the 
bell of the President, as he rang and shouted his 
unavailing appeals for order. 

At last a comparative calm was restored, but 
the ground-swell of emotion prevented any further 
serious discussion. Silvela spoke again, deprecating 
the soldierly rashness with which, as he said, Gen- 
eral Prim had made this question a matter of life 
and death. The President of the Council responded, 
this time with admirable coolness, affecting great 
surprise at the effect his words had created, but 
reiterating his statement of the all-important char- 



344 CASTILIAN DAYS, 

deter of the vote. The members, now thoroughly 
aroused and eager for the fray, began to clamor d 
votar / 

The voting began in an intense silence. Each 
member rises in turn in his place, gives his own 
name, and votes si or no. As the vote went sweep- 
ing around the red plush semicircle, it was so close 
that the coolest hearts beat faster. But the last 
ayes are gathered in on the Federal mountain, where 
Castelar, Figueras, and Louis Blanc are enthroned, 
and they are not enough by six. The Cabinet is 
saved, and the coalition is broken. 

The power of Prim is consolidated anew for the 
present. He has successfully withstood an attack 
from a combination embracing every possible shade 
of opposition, and founded upon a just vindication 
of parliamentary prerogative. It is scarcely within 
the limits of possibility to conceive that Unionists 
and Carlists can plant themselves again on a plat- 
form where the Eepublicans can consistently aid 
them. In the hope of destroying the Ministry, the 
reactionary parties for one instant seized the weapon 
of right ; and the progressive Monarchists, to pre- 
serve their organization, availed themselves of the 
discipline of absolutism.' People, talk for a day or 
two of the chilling majority of six as being a virtual 
government defeat ; but it can be more correctly re- 
garded as an attack made by the opposition in the 
best conceivable conditions of success, received and 



A FIELD-NIGHT IN THE CORTES. 345 

repulsed by the government at the weakest point of 
its defences. 

The incident shows a positive progress in Spanish 
politics. The coalition which has thus fallen to 
pieces resembled in some respects that aggregation 
of parties that drove Espartero from the Begency 
in the height of his power, a quarter of a century 
ago. Then, however, there was so little cohesion in 
the mass of conspirators, that the coalition only sur- 
vived the victory a week or two. The country lived 
in anarchy until the queen was declared of age, at 
thirteen years, and Mr. Olozaga was placed at the 
head of the government. For five days there was 
a deep breath of relief and public confidence. But 
the Camarilla of the Balace poisoned the mind of 
the baby sovereign against the Bremier, and induced 
her to make a solemn charge against that grave and 
courtly statesman, that he had locked her up in her 
despacho, and by physical violence forced her to sign 
a decree which he wanted ; an utterly absurd and 
fantastic falsehood, but one which broke up the 
government, and brought into power the vulgar 
despot, Gonzalez Bravo, — a convincing proof of 
the precocious corruption of the queen and the 
terrible disorganization of parties. 

On the other hand, we see this later coalition 
lasting in something like harmony nearly two years ; 
working together in the formation of a Constitution 
freer than that of any European monarchy, and at 



346 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

last broken by the secession of the more conserva- 
tive fraction, who were aghast at the apparently 
serious march of reform undertaken by the majority. 
They choose with great skill and judgment the most 
favorable battle-ground. They make an issue upon 
a violation of a just prerogative of the Cortes, where 
they are sure of the aid of the always consistent and 
uncompromising Eepublicans. The attack is made 
with vigor and prudence. But in the face of this 
formidable combination, the government has ob- 
tained cohesion enough to gain a substantial vic- 
tory. 

It gains by the very secession. It is now able to 
move forward with unshackled feet in the path of 
progress. It is free to seek its true inspiration in 
the ranks of the democracy. It may now be sure 
that a combination of plunder is a mere rope of 
sand, and the requirements of the time can only be 
met by parties founded on the principles of practical 
liberty. 



THE MORAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 347 



THE MOEAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 

There would be little hope for good government 
in Spain if you accepted the statements of well-in- 
formed people. They are almost all pessimists. The 
higher you go in the social hierarchy, the gloomier 
are the views they express of the possibilities of 
liberal government. I was one day talking with a 
most cultivated and enlightened gentleman, who 
spoke with great warmth and admiration of the 
liberal representative systems of England and Amer- 
ica. "We shall have it here finally, I suppose"; 
then added with bitter sadness, " The only trouble 
will be for the first five or six hundred years." 
Even the reactionists appear, in conversation, to 
have a platonic regard for freedom, and speak of it 
as younger sons speak of the rose that all are 
praising, which is not the rose for them. 

"When you consider the arrogant self-esteem which 
lies at the bottom of the Spanish character, it is hard 
to reconcile with it this renunciation of the highest 
ideals in government. You would think they would 
insist upon it that their government was better than 
any other, because it was theirs. But the contrary 
is the case. The better class of Spaniards usually 



348 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

admit the faults of their system, and say it is the 
best attainable while there are Spaniards in Spain. 
" You must govern this people with the Constitution 
in one hand and a club in the other," said a dis- 
tinguished officer to me, who five minutes before 
had called the Peninsula a paradise and its denizens 
unfallen types of manhood. There is an old legend 
which relates that when St. Ferdinand went to 
heaven he was kindly received by the Virgin and 
requested to ask for Spain anything he thought 
necessary. He was not slow to avail himself of 
this unlimited credit. He asked for fertile soil, a 
serene sky, for brave men and lovely women, for 
plentiful store of corn and wine and oil. All these 
were granted with divine largess. The royal saint 
then bethought himself to ask for good government. 
But the gracious Queen of Heaven promptly refused 
this prayer, saying, " If I give you that, all my 
angels will emigrate to Spain, and I shall be left 
without a court." 

It is to the past, rather than to the present, that 
we must look for an explanation of this apathetic 
acquiescence in vicious government. The Spaniards 
are not an unmanageable people. A government 
which could gain their confidence would have an 
easy task in administering their affairs. We can- 
not attribute the corruptions of their political or- 
ganization to any innate lack of honesty in the 
national character. The individual Spaniard is 



THE MORAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 349 

rather an honest man, — muy hombre de bien, 
Montesquieu said, more than a century ago, "The 
Spaniards have been in all ages famous for their 
honesty. Justin mentions their fidelity in keeping 
whatever was intrusted to their care ; they have 
frequently suffered death rather than reveal a 
secret. They have still the same fidelity for which 
they were formerly distinguished. All the nations 
who trade to Cadiz trust their fortunes to the 
Spaniards and have never yet repented it." 

With all these good qualities, their administration 
is the most corrupt in the world. It is a legacy from 
the centuries of despotism, during which it was 
nurtured by the abuses of arbitrary power and 
slowly poisoned by the casuistry of the Church. 
The omnipotence of the king was reflected in his 
sordid ministers. The grasping and greedy clergy 
ran coupled with the tyrant state, and shared the 
spoil of the robberies it assisted and condoned. 
Despotism assured impunity to plunder, and the 
spiritual power gave sanction to the villanies by 
which it throve. The great aristocratic houses 
have in large proportion found their origin in 
rascally placemen. The spirit of municipal inde- 
pendence which, if it had lived, would have checked 
the corruptions of the central power, went out in 
disaster and blood on the fatal field of Villalar. 
The bourgeoisie of Spain bowed its head on the 
ensanguined block where John of Padilla died. 



350 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

From that time on through Austrians and Bourbons 
the kings and the priests have had their own foul 
will of the government. And the rule of crown 
and gown can best be judged by its results in 
Spain. 

There is, in short, a lack of principle in the 
higher walks of government such as is not else- 
where seen. It is not so much dishonesty as it is 
a total absence of conscience in political matters. 
It is the morality of Loyola improved by Machiavel. 
Not only does the end justify the means, but it also 
justifies itself, which is often the more serious task. 
Not only will the average Spanish politician sustain 
the policy of doing evil that good may come, but he 
will commit infamies to attain ends which are 
themselves equally objectionable, according to any 
code of morals known to the world. A minister 
thinks it an entirely proper proceeding to call the 
journalists of his party together and authorize them 
to publish an unfounded piece of information for 
political effect. Far from being blamed, he is ap- 
plauded for it, if the trick succeeds. They have a 
brow of bronze when detected and exposed in a 
misrepresentation. They merely say in explanation 
that the circumstances under which such and such 
statements were made required the greatest reserve. 

By a curious freak of language, the Castilian is 
the only tongue of Europe which has adopted the 
Latin fabulare as the ordinary verb of speech, — 






THE MOEAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 351 

the Spanish Tiablar. By a similar unconscious feli- 
city, they call an official letter an " expedient." The 
word which in their vocabulary expresses the lowest 
form of silly simplicity is candido, — candid. A 
man who speaks what he thinks is regarded as near 
the perilous borders of idiocy. 

Conscious of this insincerity in themselves, they 
always expect it in others. They have the absurd 
and irrational distrust of maniacs. It is this which 
renders their diplomacy so annoying and vexatious. 
They take all you say as a ruse to cover your real 
intentions, and try to amuse you with falsehoods 
while they are endeavoring to detect your ulterior 
motives. There was a striking instance of this in 
the time of John Tyler. This distinguished acci- 
dent, in his superserviceable zeal for slavery, im- 
agined he had discovered an English and abolition 
plot for freeing the slaves of Cuba and establishing 
a republic on the Island. He instantly offered the 
assistance of the military and naval forces of the 
United States to Chevalier d'Argaiz, the Spanish 
Minister at Washington, to quell any such attempt 
in case it took place. D'Argaiz, who had been so 
long out of Spain that he understood something of 
human nature, saw at once that the offer was genuine 
and dictated solely by devotion to slavery, and so 
accepted it with gratitude. But on informing his 
government of the occurrence, he was at once re- 
called and disgraced for his unparalleled innocence. 



352 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

The wise men of Madrid discovered under this ex- 
traordinary offer, as plain as the nose on Mr. Tyler's 
face, a deep-laid scheme of Saxon land-theft. They 
did not know how exquisitely the knave and the 
fool were balanced in the Virginia statesman. 

You can never, even after years of experience, 
predict the answer which the Spanish government 
will make to a just claim. You can only be sure 
of one thing, — that it will not pay. They will at 
first deny the fact, they will next make an argu- 
ment on the law, and they will end by silence and 
shameless delay. Even the bayonet is not always 
a sufficient persuader. They would often rather 
fight than pay. 

There is usually too pressing need of money in 
the august circles of the court and cabinet to have any 
of it wasted in the payment of debts. It has been the 
custom during many reigns, for good and faithful 
servants of the crown to save a large percentage 
of the estimates of their departments, and give it 
to their gracious sovereign. It is said that Calo- 
marde once handed to Ferdinand VII. a quarter 
of a million dollars pared off the budget. The 
cooking of his accounts produced this dainty dish 
to set before the king. In more recent days the 
same amiable habit was kept up in favor of Ferdi- 
nand's gentle daughter and heiress. 

With these examples in high places, is it wonder- 
ful that the subordinate officers of the government 



THE MORAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 353 

should hold somewhat lax views of their duties to 
the state ? Their salaries are ridiculously small, A 
dozen of them are appointed to do the work of two 
or three, and the sum which would afford a support 
to these is divided into the pittance of the dozen. 
They must live, they say. The rainy day is more 
likely to come to-morrow than the day after. Ad- 
ministrations change so rapidly that no man is 
sure of his wretched place for an hour. Instead of 
gaining credit by an honest discharge of his du- 
ties, he would only win the contempt of his neigh- 
bors. There is a curious cynicism about it. Ford 
describes, in his caustic way, a visit he made to a pro- 
vincial governor. A cloaked cavalier went out as 
he entered. He found the eminent functionary shov- 
elling gold into his desk. " Many ounces, Excel- 
lency ! " " Yes, my friend," said the cheerful patriot. 
" I do not intend to dine on potatoes hereafter." 

This conviction of the dishonesty of their rulers 
is deeply rooted in the minds of the common peo- 
ple. It will impair for many years to come the free 
and complete operation of liberal representative- 
government. There is no question that since the 
adoption of the modern constitutional system there 
has been a great improvement in these matters. 
The improvement will continue and increase as the 
people take a more and more active part in polities. 
But there seems as yet very little growth of public 
confidence. 



354 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

The masses, considering the government a band 
of robbers, naturally endeavor to make their gains 
as small as possible. Nowhere is the smuggler so 
popular and respectable a personage. The govern- 
ment has no rights, and the citizen thinks himself 
justified in cheating to the fullest extent the officers 
of the revenue. There appears to be no idea of 
moral wrong attached to a fraud upon the state. 
One of the commonest results of years of tyranny 
is this disregard of civic obligations. A lie told to 
deceive or elude the government is a mere matter 
of course. The Ministry of the Colonies published 
in March, 1870, a decree abolishing the proofs 
of purity of blood in the Colonies. He made in 
the preamble the extraordinary declaration that it 
was impossible to establish the truth in cases of 
doubtful parentage, as parents were in the habit of 
swearing daily that they were not the fathers of 
their own children. This cruel and barbarous relic 
of the old law of caste had thus become a dead 
letter through the corruption of conscience which it 
caused among its victims. 

From these two causes — the want of principle 
among leading men, and the want of faith among 
the people — has resulted that utter absence of 
genuine political agitation and discussion which has 
marked the history of Spain for many years. There 
can be no wholesome political life for a nation 
without the shock of controversy. There has never 



THE MORAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 355 

been any controversy, properly speaking, in Spain. 
In the spiritual world, the bigots of the sixteenth 
century did their work so well that it will require 
many years of the sunshine of freedom and the 
friction of foreign missions to warm the torpid souls 
of the masses into sentient life. In politics it is to 
be hoped that the work will be easier, as the obsta- 
cles in this case are merely the habits and traditions 
of a relatively small number. 

Nothing is more puzzling to a stranger than the 
political nomenclature of the Spaniards. It is at 
once reduced to a question of men, and, incidentally, 
measures. If you ask your neighbor at a cafe, 
" What are the Progresistas ? " he will be almost 
sure to answer, " Prim's men." " And what are 
the Union Liberals ? " The reply will generally be, 
" Since O'Donnell's death, it is hard to say, — Ser- 
rano and Topete and Eios Eosas, and the Devil 
knows what." For a long time Eivero was called 
the Democratic party, but there is too sterling 
stuff in that fraction to be absorbed by any one 
man. 

As a general thing the old parties have eschewed 
platforms. They have usually confined themselves 
in their public utterances to denunciations of their 
opponents, to clamoring for retrenchment and 
reform as if they wanted it, and to insisting that 
the honor of Spain requires that the other side 
should go out and they in. Of course with such a 



356 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

system and such an organization a strong and vig- 
orous canvass of principles is impossible. The only 
weapons of Spanish political warfare have been, 
hitherto, intrigue and insurrection. 

The possession of the monarch was at all times 
a matter of the greatest importance. With the 
single exception of Charles III., there has been no 
king in Spain since Philip II. capable of ruling. 
In the days of absolutism the first minister was 
dictator, and since the beginning of the constitu- 
tional regime he has been little less. This despotic 
power was continually tempered and chastened, not 
so much by a regard for public opinion, because 
that has scarcely existed, as by a fear of treason 
in the antechamber and cabals in the boudoir. In 
this field the worst and meanest combatants had the 
best chance of victory. It would be hard to con- 
ceive of a coarser and more stupid plot than that to 
which Isabella II. lent herself, in her vicious child- 
hood, which drove Olozaga into disgrace and exile, 
and broke up the government which had been 
formed with such infinite labor and care on the 
ruins of Espartero's power. Yet it was as success- 
ful as a hammer in the hand of an idiot, which can 
pulverize the work of Phidias. A clumsy lie, 
taught to this youthful queen in her cabinet, re- 
peated before the titled hirelings of the palace, 
dukes, marquises, and counts by dozens, not one of 
whom could have believed it ; was followed by the 



THE MORAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 357 

publication of a new ministry in the Gazette and a 
political revolution in Spain. The reign, thus begun, 
continued under the same baleful auspices. A safe 
word whispered by a crawling confessor, an attack 
of nerves on a cloudy day, the appearance of a well- 
made soldier at a levee, have often sufficed to break 
and make administrations. The influence of sex 
in the government of the Peninsula is a powerful 
argument for the Salic law. Yet this law came 
from the Franks, those continent barbarians who 
respected their women much more highly than the 
Latins, and with reason, for Tacitus speaks of 
their sever a matrimonia, and says, Paucissima in 
tarn numerosa gente adulteria. How much wiser is 
the exclusion, in warmer climes, of women from the 
government ! Maria Louisa and Christina, in suc- 
cessive reigns, behind the throne, gravely impaired 
its prestige, and to their descendant, Isabella, was 
given the opportunity of finishing the work. 

Each of the prominent leaders in Spanish politics 
has continually at his orders a compact body of 
mercenary captains of tens, who know their owner 
and are faithful to their master's crib. These are 
very valuable property, and must be watched and 
fed with great care, or the adversary will have them 
in his own corral on some unexpected morning. 
They are generally venal, though not always so, 
They have often gone to sure death at the bidding 
of their leader, or followed him cheerfully into exile 






358 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

and poverty in the hope of better times. Paciencia 
y barajar, — " Patience and shuffle the cards/'— is 
the favorite motto of the Spanish politician. The 
changes are so rapid and sudden that each is as 
sure of coming occasionally to the top, as the sepa- 
rate cogs of a revolving wheel. 

It is this gambler's spirit which has made insur- 
rection so popular in Spain as a political engine. In 
other countries it is only a highly excited public 
feeling or the pressure of intolerable wrongs that 
can make an insurrection possible. But in this 
volcanic region it is a recognized implement of 
political warfare; organized in cold blood, carried 
through if luck favors, and abandoned as soon as it 
seems unlikely to succeed. They do not often 
really overturn the government; not more than 
one in half a dozen attains its object. But lotteries 
are none the less popular that there are more blanks 
than prizes. They owe some of their popularity to 
the facility with which the leaders get away to 
France or to Gibraltar, and the credit and capital 
which even an unsuccessful rising, if conducted 
with spirit and energy, gains for a rising politician. 
There is another most fatal habit which contributes 
powerfully to their vogue, — that of voting indem- 
nities and rewards for time lost in exile, whenever 
by a turn of the cards the baffled rebels come to 
power. This is an abuse utterly without justifica- 
tion, but so entirely in accordance with tradition 



THE MOKAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 359 

that General Prim thought it necessary to introduce 
a bill for the benefit of his fellow-conspirators of 
1866, when President of the Council in 1870. It 
is a symptom of awakening conscience in the Cortes 
that so many of the government party voted against 
him on that occasion. 

Insurrections started by popular agitators are 
almost always failures. Without a considerable 
military force to pronounce at the proper moment, 
it is mere madness to attempt a revolution. Very 
often the regiments you have bought grow prudent 
and thoughtful at the last moment, and the best- 
planned military plots gang agley by the repurchase 
of the conspirators. The reason why the Bevolu- 
tion of September, 1868, was so complete and per- 
fect a success was that the Queen had driven so 
many generals into exile that there were none so 
good in Spain ; the navy was brought over by To- 
pete, who had been outraged by the causeless 
banishment of Montpensier; and the disgust of 
I the country with the government was so great and 
1 evident that the army had no heart to obstinately 
i oppose a movement which was so likely to triumph. 
'( From all these reasons Serrano's army at Alcolea 
- was stronger materially, and infinitely more power- 
jj ful morally, that that of Novaliches, and Prim's 
| conquest of the seaboard was a mere pleasure ex- 
| cursion. 

Since the Revolution the army has been perfectly 



360 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

quiet. There is more or less talk of Carlist and 
Alfonsist intrigues, but they are probably unfounded. 
The time has not yet come for a strong movement 
in favor of either pretender. Yet there are very 
few officers in the army who do not occasionally 
canvass the chances for a pronunciamento, and re- 
gard this as among the most likely contingencies of 
the future. " In the next emigration, I shall visit 
the United States," a brilliant young officer said to 
me one day, in as simple and matter-of-fact a tone as 
a lieutenant in our service would use to announce 
his intention of spending his next furlough at 
Saratoga. 

So frequent are these insurrections and so much 
a matter of course, that they have given rise in 
Spain to an extension of the right of asylum never 
thought of by Vattel or Puffendorf. Not only are 
all the legations in Madrid periodically crowded with 
the vanquished heroes of barricades, but all the con- 
sulates on the seaboard have the same power and the 
same responsibilities. Even after the killing has be- 
gun a consul can carry his flag out of the city followed 
by all who choose to avail themselves of its pro- 
tection. A legation which would refuse to receive 
any political fugitive, or any number of them, would 
be considered wanting in every attribute of hu- 
manity. When your house is full, and the fighting 
is over, it is regarded as the proper thing for you to 
take all your guests in the train with you, as your 



THE MORAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 361 

own family, and convey them safely to France. 
This is an office no one ever declines. The con- 
sequences of refusal would be damaging to your 
peace of mind in after years. You may be reason- 
ably sure that if you shut your door in the face of 
a Spaniard who is running for his life, that his 
hours are numbered. The sport of cudgelling and 
trampling and stabbing a helpless fugitive is too 
tempting to be withstood by any mob of Celtic 
blood. The government has in former days been 
no more merciful than the street -killers. They 
only shot their victims more regularly and decent- 
ly. With other improvements of the Eevolution, 
there has been a great change for the better in the 
treatment of prisoners. It seems as if the Prim 
government would greatly prefer their convicts 
should escape than be shot. Suner y Capdevila, 
under sentence of death for his share in the Cata- 
lan insurrection of 1869, escaped to France with- 
out trouble, and after six months of exile, worn out 
by homesickness, he had the insane audacity to 
come back to Madrid and take his seat one day in 
the Cortes. The members rubbed their eyes, and 
stared as at a ghost. His friends hurried him out 
of the hall, and the officers arrested him at the 
door and confined him in a room on the ground 
floor, where, by Prim's order, a window was left 
open, and Suner, the most honest and pure-minded 
atheist who ever lived, who could with as just a 

16 



362 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

claim as Ben Aclhem's, demand that his name be 
written among the lovers of man, went back un- 
limited to his wearisome exile. Every one laughed, 
but the old reactionists said, " What children these 
are in the government to-day ! O'Donnell would 
have laughed also, but he would have shot him all 
the same." 

The policy of retreat in troubled times is one 
which seems very groundless to a foreigner and 
very necessary to Spaniards. When the Bepubli- 
can insurrection broke out in Catalonia in the au- 
tumn of 1869, the Eepublican members of the 
Cortes, who strongly opposed the movement, and 
who had done no unlawful act, kept their seats 
manfully in the Chamber, until the suspension of 
individual rights. They then retired in a body from 
the house, notwithstanding a most impressive and 
earnest appeal from Marshal Prim. Most of the 
foreigners in Madrid blamed them for it ; said that 
their place was in their seats, taking care that the 
commonwealth received no detriment in the ab- 
normal state of things. But it afterwards appeared 
that these men had a surer instinct of danger than 
any foreigners could have. There was one night in 
which the whole minority would have been caged 
but for the warning they received from a faithful 
friend in the Cabinet. 

Later, in the summer of 1870, when the Carlists 
were organizing a powerful propaganda with their 



THE MORAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 363 

journals and their clubs, some of the street arabs 
of Madrid attacked for several nights in succession 
the Carlist Casino. The government sent a small 
police-force to protect the Casino, which proved 
powerless for the purpose, and the row went on for 
an hour or so every night, localized in a single 
street. In the course of the disturbance, an amiable 
young gentleman of good family and position, who 
happened to be passing that way, was set upon and 
murdered by the human hyenas who were howling 
about the Casino, for the mere love of killing. 
Suddenly the Carlist party, in the height of its 
strength and efficiency, resolved upon retreat. They 
closed their clubs, discontinued their journals, and 
vanished in an instant from the political world. 
Some of the prominent parliamentary leaders pre- 
sented themselves at the American legation asking 
for shelter. This was a most singular choice, — the 
advocates of divine right and the Inquisition com- 
ing for safety to Eepublican heretics. But they 
were of course kindly received. In a few days 
they had left Madrid and were scattered over 
Europe. There is but one motive which could 
have induced such courageous and energetic men to 
have thus condemned their party to silence and 
inaction. They thought their lives were in danger, 
and that the protest of the living would be more 
effectual than the blood of martyrs. 

There can be no doubt that a great and most 



364 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

beneficent change is beginning in the political life 
of Spain. There can be no surer proof of this than 
the attacks of the reaction. They say the Bevolu- 
tionary government is composed of imbeciles, of 
men powerless to rule. The orators of traditional 
leanings continually denounce the government as 
incapable of leading and controlling the Cortes ; 
attributing this lack of capacity to inexperience, 
and the pernicious influence of liberal doctrines. 
They do not see that it is the duty of a parliament- 
ary government to seek its inspiration in popular 
opinion as expressed by the representatives of the 
nation ; that it is too late to expect any government 
to give to its deputies each day their daily ideas. 
In many matters of more or less importance, the 
government has been defeated by a vote of the 
Chamber where it was supported generally by a 
large majority. So far from seeing any symptoms 
of chaos in this, I cannot but regard it as a sign of 
vigorous life. Too many Spaniards look back with 
regret to the old days of personal rule, when the 
game of intrigue was so much easier and simpler 
than now, — when you must watch public opinion 
and feel the pulse of a nervous and independent 
Chamber. It is not long since a great minister, 
whose position in the palace had become precarious, 
prolonged and fortified his lease of power by intro- 
ducing into the royal Alcazar an athletic young 
fellow who found favor in august eyes. He was 



THE MORAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 365 

soon made Governor of Madrid, to the stupefaction 
of that loyal city. His office obliged him, according 
to an immemorial custom, to go every night at the 
mid watch to the palace, and to give to the sover- 
eign the comforting assurance that " all was well." 
It is to be hoped that a ministry will never be 
saved or lost again by such trivial means. The old 
facility of combination of personal interests for 
place and plunder has greatly diminished. The 
result is, it is true, a certain lack of cohesion in the 
government phalanx , but this is compensated by 
the additional vigor and life it has gained by the 
thorough adhesion of the democratic element. The 
session of the night of San Jose, which I have 
sketched in another chapter, which resulted in the 
excision of the Liberal Union from the majority, 
gained the government more than it lost. The 
Progresista-Democrats, no longer encumbered with 
that able but sceptical party of intrigue and com- 
promise, have walked with freer limbs, have wrought 
with a more liberal hand, since that memorable 
nidit. 

o 

A new and most important force has entered into 
Spanish politics by the organization of the Bepub- 
lican party. This is a novel apparition in the 
Cortes and in the canvass : a party that asks nothing 
for its leaders ; that would not accept a portfolio 
if it were offered ; that rejects all compromise of 
principles, and rights its battle out on one line. It 



366 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

is far from being a perfect organization. There are 
even now the warning symptoms of a serious 
schism on the question of making their Republic, 
when they get it, unitary or federal. They feel so 
sure it is coming that a quarrel over its name al- 
ready disturbs the peace of the household. But even 
their dissensions and controversies are something 
hitherto unknown to the Spanish political under- 
standing. They quarrel over principles, never over 
men or plunder. Not a word of personality enters 
into these fiery debates in their clubs and conven- 
tions, where the science of government, and not the 
claims of party, is thoroughly discussed, — where 
Hobbes and Montesquieu, Madison and Jefferson, 
are quoted and regarded as high authority. So far, 
the fight they have made in the Cortes in favor of 
liberal principles has never been in the least em- 
barrassed by these controversies. They have always 
presented a solid phalanx in favor of individual 
rights, the divorce of Church and State, the abolition 
of slavery, the autonomy of the colonies. They 
have not divided on a single question of importance. 
They have always displayed the most admirable 
courage, united to the most perfect temper. In the 
masses of the party, the counsels of prudence and 
moderation have generally prevailed. In the spring 
of 1870, at a time when there was much murmur- 
ing against the leaders of the party, and especially 
against the Eepublican members of the Cortes, for 






THE MORAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 367 

the slow march of events, a convention of the 
whole party was called to meet at Madrid and 
arrange a platform and plan of organization. There 
came together in obedience to this summons a full 
delegation from every province in Spain. They 
remained in session a week, and although there 
was perhaps a superabundance of eloquent discus- 
sion, there was, on the whole, a practical good-sense 
and good-feeling that astonished the monarchical 
party, and inspired the liveliest hopes among 
thoughtful liberals. They adopted a platform of 
principles of unobjectionable Eepublicanism, and 
set on foot a scheme of energetic and effective 
organization. They separated in great harmony, 
after having appointed a resident Directory at 
Madrid, consisting — as the most pointed contra- 
diction they could give to the assertions of distrust 
of their leaders — of Orense, Figueras, Castelar, 
Pi y Margall, and Urgelles, — the first four being 
the chief Republican orators of the Cortes, and 
all representing the sober, practical democracy of 
the nineteenth century, rather than the wild fever- 
dreams of 1793, or the rosy reveries of socialism. 

This spectacle of a party whose only rule of 
action is in popular opinion is, I repeat, entirely 
new, and not easily comprehensible in Spain. It is 
reported that the venerable Mr. Guizot recently said 
to Emile Ollivier : " Seek your support in the 
centre, for there the masses follow their leaders; 



368 CASTILIAN I>AYSw 

never in the extremes, for there the leaders follow the 
masses." The observation was sagacious and worthy 
of the veteran historian, hut the advice founded on 
it was what might have been expected from the 
constitutional tyrant who destroyed the government 
of Louis Philippe. It is the legitimate corollary of 
universal suffrage, that leaders should find their 
inspiration in the uncorrupted convictions of the 
people. This is a hard matter to accept in the 
Peninsula. Even General Prim once taunted the 
Republican deputies with heading an "undisci- 
plined troop," and Rivero tried to pique Castelar by 
telling him that if the Republic came it would be 
Guisasola, and not he, that would be the favorite of 
the rabble, — a gird that had no other effect than to 
draw from the generous tribune a hearty and frank 
defence of his more radical rival. 

The uncompromising consistency of the Repub- 
licans is equally inexplicable to the men of the old 
parties, as it takes its rise from this unreserved ac- 
ceptance of the popular will as the only rule of civil 
government. There are many men among the Mon- 
archists who care nothing for the monarchical prin- 
ciple ; who merely prefer that form as affording a more 
convenient method of carrying on the administration 
of affairs in the old corrupt way. If the Republi- 
cans in the Cortes were a coterie instead of a party, 
if they would consult their own individual interests 
instead of the mandate of their constituents, an ar- 



THE MORAL OF SPANISH POLITICS. 369 

rangement might be made any day to throw the 
government into a republican form, with sufficient 
guaranties for power and profit to the old profes- 
sional politicians of the past. But this awkward 
and obstinate honesty makes it impossible to arrive 
at any understanding with them. The lobbyists say 
in their spite and anger, " If there were no Bepub- 
licans, we could have the Eepublic easy enough." 

He is a rash man who will venture predictions in 
regard to the course of things in Spain. The changes 
are so sudden and violent as to baffle prophecy. We 
have seen too much of the gourd-like growth of 
revolutions, which at evening are not and in the 
morning overshadow the Peninsula, to attempt to 
cast the horoscope of the government of September. 
But we think it must require the most obstinate 
pessimism to refuse to see that a new and beneficent 
spirit has begun to influence the political life of 
Spain. It is as yet too young and new to control 
completely the progress of affairs. But it is coura- 
geous and aggressive. It speaks eveiy morning in 
the press denouncing the old infernal rule of vio- 
lence and of superstition. It attacks the slavers of 
Cuba and the thought-stranglers of the Yatican. It 
is heard in the clubs, in the widespread committees 
of the people, who are laboring to prepare them- 
selves to administer their own affairs. Its voice 
rings out in the Cortes in strains of lyric beauty, 
that are only heard in the fresh and dewy dawn of 

16* x 



370 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

democracies. The day that is coming is not to be 
tranquil and cloudless. The transformations of 
systems are not accomplished like those of the 
pantomimes. There will be bloodshed and treasons 
and failures enough to discourage and appall the 
faint-hearted. But the current cannot be turned 
backward. The record of these two laborious years 
of liberal effort has not been written in water. The 
shadow will go forward on the dial, though so slowly 
that only the sharpest eyes can see it move. Spain, 
the latest called of the nations of Europe, is not 
condemned to everlasting punishment for the crimes 
of her kings and priesthood. The people cannot do 
worse than they have done. It requires no sanguine 
faith to hope they will do much better when they 
come to their estates. 



THE BOURBON DUEL. 371 



THE BOURBON DUEL. 

If there is one fact that shows more clearly than 
others the lack of modern civilization in Spain, it is 
the continued subservience of the better classes to 
the point of honor. In England the duel has fallen 
into the same disrepute in which it is held in Amer- 
ica. In Germany it is given over to boys. In France 
it is a rare occurrence that a gentleman fights. The 
daily rencounters in the Bois de Boulogne are inva- 
riably among journalists and jockeys, — men un- 
certain of their position and standing, who feel in 
their uneasy self-consciousness the necessity to 
clonner des preuves. The hired bravo of the Empire 
is Mr. Paul de Cassagnac, whose real name is Paul 
Granier. He has fought six duels with men who 
called him by his proper name, and the press of 
Paris has been cowed into accepting his usurped 
agnomen. He has great coolness, great skill in the 
use of arms, great readiness of foul invective, but 
there is probably no man in Paris less respected, 
unless we except his Imperial master. 

But in Spain the duel is the resort of gentlemen. 
The point of honor is absolute in society. The 
phrase itself has been used so much, that its angles 



372 CASTILIAN DAYS, 

have been worn off and the three words rubbed 
into one, — pundonor (punto de honor). Not satis- 
fied with that, the Spaniards have started from the 
basis of this barbarous abbreviation to build an ad- 
jective, pundonor oso, which conveys the highest 
compliment you can pay to a cavalier of Castile. 
To be touchy and quarrelsome — bizarre, as they 
term it — is the sure index of a noble spirit. If 
you are not bellicose yourself, you must at least 
always be ready to accept a quarrel with alacrity. 
This is a corvee to which every one is subject who 
pretends to be in the world. 

You must not be too nice, either, in the choice of 
an adversary. The son of one of the most im- 
portant families of the kingdom was recently killed 
in a duel with a man of greatly inferior social posi- 
tion. The Governor of the Philippine Islands 
fought with a young clerk, whom he had impris- 
oned at Manilla for not taking off his hat when 
his Excellency passed by for his airing. The 
clerk bided his time and buffeted the Governor at 
the door of the Casino in Madrid, and hence the 
fight. 

Neither youth nor age is a just cause of ex- 
emption. Two gray -haired lieutenant-generals went 
out last winter for a friendly interchange of shots. 
Two boys at the military school rode in from 
Guadalajara with their friends and fought before 
sunrise in the shadow of the monument of the Dos 



THE BOURBON DUEL. 373 

de Mayo in the Prado. One was left dead in the 
frosty grass at the foot of the obelisk, and the rest 
mounted their horses and hurried back to be in 
time for morning prayers at the college. 

The duel is, therefore, in Spain not the absurd 
anachronism that it is in countries more advanced. 
It is a portion of the life of the people. It is an 
incident of the imperfect civilization which still 
exists in the Peninsula. It is believed in and re- 
spected as a serious and dignified end to a quarrel. 
There are men who see the utterly false and illogical 
character of the custom ; but even these, while de- 
ploring it, do not dare oppose it. 

It is natural, in consequence of this attitude of 
public opinion in the country, that the duel which 
resulted in the death of Prince Henry of Bourbon, 
at the hands of his cousin the Duke de Mont- 
pensier, should meet with very different appre- 
ciation in Madrid from that which it receives in 
all other capitals. Yet we cannot but be pleased 
to see that even here it has occasioned wide discus- 
sion, and from the standing of the parties concerned 
has attained a vast publicity which must result in a 
salutary change of public sentiment. 

No duel so important in the position of the par- 
ties, or in probable results, has taken place in recent 
times. The fight of Burr and Hamilton alone is to 
be compared to it. The combatants were both 
princes of the blood royal of Spain and France, — 



374 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

not only high in the hierarchy of two dethroned 
families, but of great importance in the actual 
situation, and factors of value in the problems of 
the future. Both were men of mature age and 
fathers of families. Montpensier is forty-five and 
Prince Henry was a year older. The first is a captain- 
general in the army, the second was an admiral in 
the navy. Both professed liberal sentiments. Both 
were exiled before the Bevolution as dangerous to 
the dynasty, and the battle of Alcolaa, in which 
neither took part, opened to both the gates of the 
country. 

Here the parallel ceases. Montpensier returned 
rich, powerful, the head and hope of a large and 
active party, — the most prominent candidate for 
the vacant throne. Prince Henry came back poor, 
with few friends, with no interest, and so little in- 
fluence that the government refused to restore him 
to his active rank in the navy of which he had been 
unjustly stripped by the government of Bravo. He 
was a man of a curious scatter-brained talent. He 
had great historical knowledge, a bright and quick 
imagination, and in conversation a vivid and taking 
style, which would have been florid were it not sub- 
dued and flavored by a dry, hard cynicism, which 
found only too inviting a field of exercise in the 
politics of his country. He was an ardent Bepub- 
lican, — of the school of younger brothers, like 
Philippe figalite, and Prince Napoleon, and Maxi- 



The bourbon duel. 375 

milian of Austria, whose Republicanism was the 
fruit perhaps more of ennui and unemployed powers 
than a profound conviction. It was hard to resist 
the brilliant and picturesque talk of Prince Henry- 
while you were with him, and yet no one seemed to 
trust the witty blond Bourbon, and Monarchists and 
Republicans alike treated him with cold civility, and 
rather feared his assistance. His preference for the 
Republic was frankly and openly expressed; but 
"then," he would add with the same fatal frank- 
ness, " we Republicans are not honest nor sensible 
enough as yet. Orense will think it an outrage if 
Castelar is president, and Castelar will sulk if we 
elect Orense. We cannot do without our First 
Tenor, or our Heavy Father. We must take refuge 
in the provisional. Espartero is our only choice. 
He has no brains, but he is a noble old figure-head, 
and will launch us cleverly on our way for a year 
or two, and we must learn how to take care of the 
government before he dies." 

It may easily be imagined that, with such a taste 
for the dangerous luxury of speaking his mind, Don 
Enrique did not get on rapidly in favor with either 
the situation or the opposition. He would not flat- 
ter the regency nor train with the Republicans. If 
he had confined himself to talking, it would have 
been far better ; but from time to time he found an 
unlucky pen in his way and issued preposterous 
manifestoes which everybody read and most people 



376 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

lauglied at, but which nevertheless always had some 
uncomfortable barbs that pierced and stayed in the 
sensitive vanity of men whom he had better have 
conciliated. So while other inferior men got place 
and influence, the Ex-Infante was left to corrode his 
own heart in poverty and neglect. He was too 
proud to ascribe this to anything but his name. " I 
have an unlucky name," he would say, " but I did 
not give it to myself, and it seems to me unworthy 
of a democracy to proscribe a name. I am no bet- 
ter for being a Bourbon but — dame ! I am no 
worse. There are Bourbons and Bourbons. They 
call me descendant of Philip V. Eh hien ! I am 
descendant of Henry IY. as well. I cannot afford 
to hide my name, like my friend Montpensier." 
There was some little of bravado, even, in his re- 
solving, after the Bevolution, when the walls of 
Madrid were covered with curses on his name, to 
drop his title of Duke of Seville, which he gave to 
his son, and to assume his abhorred patronymic for 
constant wear. Enrique de Borbon, a Spanish citi- 
zen, was all the title he claimed. 

Montpensier was always his special detestation. 
There was something in the grave formal life of the 
Duke, in his wealth, in his intense respectability, 
that formed perhaps too striking a contrast to the 
somewhat Bohemian nature of Don Enrique. He 
grew more and more violent as he saw his diances 
for rehabilitation in the navy fading away. He wrote 



THE BOURBON DUEL. 377 

a long letter to Serrano, which he sent through that 
irregular medium, the public press, and which caused 
great wincing in high quarters by its trenchant criti- 
cism and naive indiscretion. It is remembered that 
Montpensier read it in Seville in his palace of San 
Telmo, and, crumpling the paper in his hand, said, 
" That man will be my ruin yet." Don Enrique ap- 
peared to have a like instinctive antipathy. When 
informed that Montpensier had come to Madrid he 
started, turned pale, and said, El 6 yo ! — * He 
or I!" 

The Duke passed through Madrid in February on 
his way to the baths of Alhama. In Spain people 
go to watering-places when they need the waters, 
with a shocking disregard of fashions or the calen- 
dar. He remained a few weeks at Alhama, and on 
his way back to Seville stopped at Madrid, — as if 
a gentleman on his way from ISTew York to Boston 
should halt for a rest at Washington. As in that 
case you would ask " what he was after'/ so asked 
the Madrilefios of the Duke, although the Castilian 
language lacks the graphic participial force which 
we give to that useful adverb. The curiosity grew 
so irritating that Mr. Cruz Ochoa, the youthful ISTeo- 
Catholic, interpellated the government, sternly ask- 
ing what the Duke was doing in Madrid To which 
the government, speaking through the phlegmatic 
oracle of Don John Prim, replied that the Duke was 
in Madrid because he chose to be, — that Spain was 



378 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

a free country, and the Duke of Montpensier was a 
soldier on leave, and could fix his domicile where 
he liked. The only thing noticeable in the speech 
of Prim was that he called the Duke Don Antonio 
de Borbon, whereas the Duke calls himself, and all 
that love him call him, Orleans. 

His position thus, in a manner, made regular and 
normal by the explanations of the government, 
Montpensier began a course of life which, though 
unobjectionable in itself, was calculated to annoy 
his enemies beyond measure. It was the season of 
Lent, and he went regularly to church. It was the 
end of a hard winter in Madrid, and he fed droves 
of paupers at his gate every morning. It was 
touching to see the squalid army, encamped before 
his pretty palace in the Fuencarral, patiently waiting 
for the stout angel to come and give them bread. The 
laurels of Peabody seemed to trouble his sleep. He 
projected a home for indigent printers, and asked 
the municipal government for some vacant lots to 
build it on. The municipal government promptly 
refused, but the indigent printers felt kindlier to 
Montpensier than before. The ragged and hungry 
squad he fed day by day were all voters too ; and 
noisy and unemployed, of the class who could 
afford to devote all their leisure, which is to say all 
their waking hours, to politics. 

That there was something like a panic among the 
opponents of the Duke is undeniable. After his 



THE BOUEBON DUEL. 379 

defeat last winter for Oviedo, he had seemed so 
utterly impossible as a candidate that the attacks 
on him had become less frequent. But now he 
seemed to be regaining that faint appearance of 
popularity which might be used as a justification 
of a sudden election by the government and Cortes. 
He was the only candidate, — he had at least one 
ardent supporter in Admiral Topete, — he needed 
watching. 

All this inflamed to the highest point the ani- 
mosity of Prince Henry. He could not brook even 
the tepid good-will his wealthy cousin was gaining 
in Madrid. He listened to imprudent or interested 
advisers, — it is widely rumored that the first im- 
pulse started from the Tuileries, — and resolved to 
put upon Montpensier an affront which, by the 
canons of Spanish honor, could only be met by a 
challenge a mort. Henry was a brave man, but he 
had accustomed himself to thinking so highly of 
Montpensier's prudence and so ill of his spirit, that 
he probably thought the insult would pass unnoticed. 
The same opinion was openly entertained and ex- 
pressed by the entire Isabelino and Napoleon interest 
in Madrid. 

It was probably, therefore, with no apprehension 
and little excitement that Don Enrique wrote and 
published that extraordinary manifesto to the Mont- 
pensierists, in which he declared himself not only 
not subservient to the Duke, but his decided politi- 



380 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

cal enemy, with a profound contempt for him per- 
sonally ; and further denounced Montpensier as a 
charlatan in politics, and ended by calling him a 
" bloated French pastry-cook." 

It is difficult to imagine a man of sense taking 
so . absurd a document seriously. Yet all Madrid 
was in a flurry of excitement over it. The ques- 
tion asked everywhere in the places where the idlers 
congregate was, " Will he fight ? " And upon the 
answer depended the good name of Montpensier in 
Spain. The two or three days that elapsed before the 
duel showed plainly that he was falling in public 
estimation by his presumed patience. 

The patience was only apparent. As soon as 
the paper fell into his hands he sent his aide-de- 
camp to ask Don Enrique if it was genuine. The 
Infante promptly sent him a copy with his auto- 
graph signature, avowing his full responsibility. 
The case was made up. The cousins were face to 
face, and, under the rules that both recognized, 
neither could recede. The next step of either 
must be over the prostrate body of the other. 

The first proceeding of Montpensier was exces- 
sively politic. Instead of selecting his seconds from 
among his own personal and political friends, he 
sent for General Alaminos, the bosom friend of 
Prim, a leading Progresista, belonging to the faction 
which has been hitherto most hostile to the Orleans 
candidature. He associated with him General Cor- 



THE BOUKBON DUEL. 381 

dova — the venerable Inspector-General of Infantry, 
a man of great and merited influence in the army — 
and Colonel Solis. 

These veterans carried to the house of Prince 
Henry the hostile message of his relative. Several 
days elapsed before Don Enrique responded. The 
delay was occasioned, partly by his consulting the 
Masonic fraternity, of which he was a member of 
high rank, — of the 33d degree, — and whose sanc- 
tion he received in the matter ; and partly by the 
difficulty he found in procuring men of character 
and position to act as his seconds. Several grandees 
of Spain refused, — a circumstance unheard of in 
their annals. At last three Eepublican deputies 
consented to act. But they put in writing their 
protest against being considered as in the least re- 
sponsible for the acts or opinions of their principal. 
This evident isolation seems powerfully to have 
impressed the unfortunate Prince. 

The duel took place at eleven o'clock, in a deso- 
late sandy plain southwest of the city, used as a 
ground for artillery practice. The officers on duty 
gathered round to enjoy this agreeable distraction 
from the monotony of garrison life. Sentries were 
posted at convenient distances to keep away any 
officers of the law who might be prowling in the 
neighborhood, and to check the curiosity of the 
peasants of the vicinity, who had no right to be 
curious in affairs of honor. The parties were placed 



382 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

ten metres apart in the stubble, which was begin- 
ning to grow green with the coming spring. For- 
tune was obstinately favorable to Don Enrique. He 
won the choice of pistols, choice of ground, and the 
first shot. The Duke, a large and powerful man, 
stood before him with his arms folded. His seconds 
had difficulty in making him assume an attitude 
more en rtyU. Don Enrique fired and missed. 
Montpensier fired and missed. The Infante fired 
again, with the same result. Montpensier fired the 
second time, and his bullet struck the barrel of 
Prince Henry's pistol, splitting, and tearing his coat 
with the fragments. At this point Montpensier's 
veteran seconds thought the affair might be properly 
terminated. But the other party, after consultation, 
decided that the conditions of the meeting were not 
yet fulfilled. 

There seems a cool ferocity about this decision 
of Don Enrique's seconds that is hard to compre- 
hend out of Spain. If a duel is necessary, it must 
be serious. A great scandal was made a short time 
ago by two generals going out to settle a difference, 
supported by three other generals on a side ; and on 
the ground they were reconciled, without a shot, by 
one of the seconds throwing his arms around their 
necks and saying that Spain had need of them, — 
two such gallant fellows must not cut each other's 
throats for a trifle. The party came in to breakfast 
in great glee, but all Madrid frowned ominously, 



THE BOURBON DUEL. 383 

and will not forgive them for forgiving each other. 
On the other hand, I have heard Spanish gentle- 
men speak with great enthusiasm of the handsome 
behavior in a recent duel of two naval officers of 
high rank, intimate friends, who had quarrelled over 
their cups. They fought twenty paces apart, to ad- 
vance to a central line and fire at will. One walked 
forward, and when near the line the other fired and 
hit him. The wounded man staggered to the line 
and said: "I am dead. Come thou up and be 
killed.' , The other came up until he touched the 
muzzle of his adversary's pistol, and in a moment 
both were dead, — like gentlemen, added my in- 
formant. 

It is possible that another motive may have 
entered into the considerations of the Eepublican 
deputies who stood as godfathers — for this is the 
name given to these witnesses in Spain — of Prince 
Henry. They could not help thinking that if 
Montpensier fell, he would be safely out of the 
way; and if he killed his cousin, he would be 
greatly embarrassed by it. 

However this may be, they stood up for another 
shot, Prince Henry a little disordered by the shock 
of the last bullet. " The Duke has got my range," 
he said. He fired and missed. Montpensier, who 
had remained perfectly cool, fired, and Don Enrique 
turned slowly and fell, his life oozing out of a 
wound in the right temple, and staining his flaxen 
curls and the dry stubble and the tender grass. 



384 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Montpensier, when it was too late, began to think 
of what he had done. When informed of the death 
of his cousin, he was terribly agitated, so that Dr. 
Eubio, who was one of Don Enrique's seconds, 
thought best to accompany the Duke to his palace. 
When they reached the gate the Duke could scarce- 
ly walk to his door. When the crowd of mendi- 
cants saw him leaning heavily on the arm of the 
physician, they concluded he was wounded, and 
burst out in loud lamentation, fearing that the end 
of his bread-giving was near. 

In an hour the whole city was buzzing with the 
news. The first impression was singularly illogical. 
Every one spoke kindly of Montpensier, and every 
one said he had lost his chance of the crown. But 
the general feeling was one of respect for the man 
who would toss away so brilliant a temptation at 
the call of honor. His prestige among army people 
was certainly improved. It seems that not a single 
voice was raised against him. The day had been 
fixed for the interpellation of Castelar. He heard 
of the duel a few minutes before the session opened, 
and was compelled to change the entire arrange- 
ment of his speech to avoid referring to Mont- 
pensier. 

When the evening journals appeared, the same 
dignified reticence was observed. The Universal, 
which had been attacking Montpensier daily for 
months, stated in a paragraph of one line that the 



THE BOUKBON DUEL. 385 

Infante Don Enrique had died suddenly that morn- 
ing. The Epoca, the organ of the restoration, went 
further, and announced that the Prince was acci- 
dentally shot while trying a pair of pistols in the 
Campamento. The widely circulated Corrcsponden- 
cia made no mention whatever of the occurrence. 

But the next day it became evident that the tra- 
ditional treatment of silence could not be followed 
in this case. The Eepublican journals, without ex- 
ception, made the incident the occasion of severe 
and extended comment. It was plain that the 
Spain of tradition and decorum had ceased to 
exist ; that the democracy proclaimed by the Con- 
stitution was a living fact ; and that this event, like 
all others, was to be submitted to the test of pub- 
licity. Heretofore it has never been the custom 
for newspapers to make any mention of duels. 
When death resulted, a notice was published in the 
usual form, announcing the decease of the departed 
by apoplexy, or some equally efficient agency, and 
no journal has ever dared hint a doubt of it. But 
in this instance the organs of absolutism and the 
advocates of the fallen dynasty vie with the Ee- 
publicans in condemning an act that they hope may 
be used for their especial ends. As the hidalgos 
refused to act as Prince Henry's witnesses because 
he was a Democrat, so the Bourbon newspapers call 
for justice on Montpensier because he is an aspirant 
for a throne they claim. 

17 Y 



386 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

I cannot help thinking that this shows progress. 
Party spirit is an incident of a better civilization 
than chivalry. 

The first judicial proceedings were eminently 
characteristic. The gentlemen who witnessed the 
duel went before the Judge of Getafe, within whose 
jurisdiction the event occurred, and testified upon 
their honor and conscience, each with his hand on 
the hilt of his sabre, that the death of Don Enrique 
Maria Fernando de Borbon was pure accident ; that 
he went out with his well-beloved cousin, my Lord 
of Montpensier, to try some new pistols ; that while 
they were trying them one was unpremeditatedly 
discharged, and the ball entered the head of the said 
Don Enrique, causing his untimely death ; that my 
Lord of Montpensier was overwhelmed with grief 
at this mournful fatality, and was unable to appear 
and testify. This was the solemn statement of two 
veteran generals, gray-headed and full of honors, who 
would have the life of their brother, if he cast a 
doubt on their veracity. 

But if the truth was considered too precious to 
be wasted on a lawyer and a civilian, they did not 
spare it in reporting the facts to the Minister of 
War, President of the Council, acting Autocrat of 
all the Spains, John Prim. He heard the whole 
story, said everything was regular, and advised them 
all to keep quiet a day or two, and the town would 
forget it, and the clatter of tongues would cease. 






THE BOURBON DUEL. 387 

The people of Madrid, trie lower classes, who 
from the mere fact of being wretched should sympa- 
thize with the unfortunate, gathered in great masses 
around the house where Prince Henry lay. It was, 
perhaps, not so much sympathy as the morbid ap- 
petite for horrors, so common in the Celtic races. 
It is probable that many of these beggars came full 
of meat from Montpensier's palace gate, to howl for 
vengeance on Mm at the modest door of his dead 
rival. 

Every means was taken to make the funeral a 
political demonstration, with indifferent success. 
Placards were posted, inviting all Spaniards to come 
and do honor to a Spaniard who had died, to vindi- 
cate the honor and independence of his country. 
On his house a verse, equally deficient in reason 
and rhyme, was posted, importing, "Here lived a 
Spaniard, the only loyal Bourbon, who, for telling 
the truth, died on the field of honor." A great 
crowd of idlers followed the Prince to his grave. 
But the means taken to attract the crowd kept away 
the better class. Mr. Luis Blanc, a man born with 
a predestinate name, made a little speech at the 
cemetery, in which he explained his presence there, 
by saying he came to the funeral of a Spanish citi- 
zen slain by a Frenchman. 

If all this excitement results in subjecting duel- 
ling in Spain to the severe judgment of the press 
and the impartial cognizance of the tribunals, Don 



388 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Enrique will have done more good in his death than 
he could have done in life. 

In a wider sense, there will be another result to 
this honorable fratricide that the world will not 
greatly regret. It places another barrier between 
Bourbons and thrones. I do not ignore the merits 
of the Orleans branch. There are good and bad 
Bourbons, and they are the best. But the whole 
family has been judged by history, and the case 
had better not he reopened. 



NECESSITY OF THE REPUBLIC. 389 



NECESSITY OF THE EEPUBLIC. 

Madrid, January, 1870. 
The Eevolution of September has not made the 
progress that its sanguine friends had hoped. The 
victory was so prompt and perfect, from the moment 
that Admiral Topete ordered his band to strike up 
the hymn of Eiego on the deck of the Zaragoza, in 
the bay of Cadiz, to the time when the special train 
from San Sebastian to Bayonne crossed the French 
frontier with Madame de Bourbon and other light 
baggage, that the world looked naturally for very 
rapid and sweeping work in the open path of re- 
form. The world ought to have known better. 
There were too many generals at the bridge of 
Alcolea to warrant any one in expecting the po- 
litical millennium to follow immediately upon the 
flight of the dishonored dynasty. We must do the 
generals the justice to say that they left no one 
long in doubt as to their intentions. Prim had not 
been a week in Madrid, when he wrote to the editor 
of the " Gaulois," announcing the purpose of himself 
and his companions to establish in Spain a constitu- 
tional monarchy. The fulfilment of this promise 
has been thus far pursued with reasonable activity 
and steadiness. The Provisional Government elected 



390 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

monarchical Cortes and framed a monarchical Consti- 
tution. They duly crushed the Eepublican risings 
in Cadiz and Catalonia, and promptly judged and 
shot such impatient patriots as they could find. 
They have unofficially offered the crown of the 
Spains to all the unemployed princes within reach 
of their diplomacy. It is hard to say what more 
they could have done to establish their monarchy. 

Yet the monarchy is no more consolidated than it 
was when the triumvirs laid their bald heads to- 
gether at Alcolea and agreed to find another king 
for Spain. The reforms they have incorporated into 
the Constitution have not been enough to conciliate 
the popular spirit, naturally distrustful of half- 
measures. The government has been forced, partly 
by its own fault and partly by the fatality of events, 
into an attitude of tyranny and repression which 
recalls the worst days of the banished race. The 
fine words of the Revolution have proved too fine 
for daily use. 

The fullest individual rights are guaranteed by 
the Constitution. But at the first civil uproar the 
servile Cortes gave them up to the discretion of the 
government. Law was to be established as the sole 
rule and criterion of action. But the most arbitrary 
and cruel sentences are written on drum-heads still 
vibrating with the roll of battle. The death-penalty 
was to be abolished. But the shadow of the gallows 
and the smoke of the fusillade are spread over half 



NECESSITY OF THE REPUBLIC. 391 

of Spain. The army was to be reduced, and the 
government has just asked the Cortes for eighty 
thousand men. The colonies were to be emanci- 
pated ; and Porto Eico stands in the Cortes vainly 
begging for reforms, while Cuba seems bent upon 
destroying with her own hands the hateful wealth 
and beauty which so long have lured and rewarded 
her tyrants. 

Among the plans and promises of the Eevolution 
was the abolition of slavery ; a few rounded periods 
in condemnation of the system, from the ready pen 
of the Minister of Ultramar, have recently appeared 
in the Gazette, and a consultative committee has 
been appointed, but nothing reported. Liberty of 
thought and speech was to be guaranteed ; but four- 
teen journals were suppressed during the autumn 
months, and all the clubs in Spain closed for sev- 
eral weeks. The freedom of the municipality was 
a favorite and most attractive idea, universally ac- 
cepted, — an autonomic state within the state. But 
great numbers of ayuntamientos, elected by universal 
suffrage, have been turned out of their town halls, 
and their places filled by swift servitors of the cap- 
tain-general of the district. 

There was pressing need and much talk of finan- 
cial reform. But the taxes are greater than ever ; 
the debt is increased, and the deficit wider day by 
day. If a nation can ever be bankrupt, Spain is 
rapidly approaching bankruptcy. 



392 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Unless the situation changes for the better, the 
Revolution of September will pass into history 
merely as a mutiny. 

The state of things which now exists is intolerable 
in its uncertainty, and in the possibility which it 
offers of sudden and unforeseen solutions. With 
the tardy restoration of individual guaranties, the 
political life of the people has begun anew. The 
Eepublicans, as usual, form the only party which 
appeals to a frank and public propaganda. The 
other factions, having little or no support in the 
body of the people, resort to their traditional tactics 
of ruse and combination. The reaction has never 
been so busy as to-day. Emissaries of the Bour- 
bons are flitting constantly from Paris to Madrid. 
The old partisans of Isabel II., who have failed to 
receive the rewards of treason from the new gov- 
ernment, are returning to their first allegiance. A 
leading journal of Madrid supports the Prince of 
Asturias for the throne, with a Montpensier regency. 
This is a bait thrown out to the Union Liberals, 
who are gradually drifting away from the late coa- 
lition. Don Carlos is watching on the border for 
another demonstration in his favor, his young wife's 
diamonds bartered for powder and lead. All the 
ravening birds of the reaction are hovering over the 
agonizing quarry of the commonwealth, waiting for 
the hour to strike. 

Of course, it is not reasonable to expect that 



NECESSITY OF THE REPUBLIC. 393 

evils bred of centuries of misrule can be extirpated 
at once. But there is a very serious question 
whether, under the system adopted by the leading 
men of Spain, they can ever be reformed. 

In all nations, the engine which is most danger- 
ous to liberty, most destructive of national pros- 
perity, is the standing army. If it were composed 
of men and officers exempt from human faults and 
vices, inaccessible to temptation, and incapable of 
wrong, it would be at best a collection of stingless 
drones, consumers that produce nothing, men in the 
vigor of youth condemned to barren idleness. But 
the army spirit of Spain is probably the worst in the 
world. In other countries the army is not much 
worse than useless. It is distinguished by its me- 
chanical, automatic obedience to the law. It is the 
boast of the army of France, for instance, that it 
never makes nor prevents revolutions. It carried 
out the coup d'etat of December, but it was not in 
the conspiracy that planned it. The army received 
orders regularly issued by the Minister of War, and 
executed them. In 1848 the army exchanged frater- 
nal salutes with the victorious volunteers ; but took 
no part in or against the emeute, except when bidden. 
But the Spanish army, from general to corporal, is 
penetrated with the poison of conspiracy. With 
the exception of the engineers, who still preserve 
some spirit of discipline, and who call themselves 
with proud humility " The Lambs/' there is not a 
13* — 



394 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

regiment in the service that cannot be bought if 
properly approached by the proper men. The com- 
mon soldiers are honest enough. If turned loose 
to-morrow, they would go joyfully to their homes 
and to profitable work. There are many officers 
who are the soul of honor. There are many who 
would willingly die rather than betray their com- 
mands. There are many who have died in recent 
years, because they would not be delivered after 
they had been sold. But they were considered 
mad. 

This corruption of the army is not confined to 
any special grade. Of course, it is easier to buy 
one man than many, so that colonels are oftener 
approached than their regiments. But in one of 
General Prim's unsuccessful insurrections, it was 
the sergeants of the artillery barracks who pro- 
nounced, and cut the throats of their officers. 

It is from causes such as this that the Spanish 
army has grown to be the most anomalous mili- 
tary establishment in the world. Every succes- 
sive minister has used it for the purposes of his 
own personal ambition, and has left in it a swarm 
of superfluous officers, who owe their grades to per- 
sonal or political services, more or less illegal. Last 
year the Spanish army contained eight soldiers to 
one officer. Now, with the enormous number of 
promotions the present liberal government has 
squandered among the supporters of General Prim, 



NECESSITY OF THE REPUBLIC. 395 

the officers have risen to the proportion oi one to 
seven. Some two dozen promotions to the grade 
of general were gazetted after the suppression of 
the late Eepublican insurrection. 

This is an evil which goes on continually in- 
creasing. Every officer who is passed over becomes 
a beggar or a conspirator. The fortunate ones may 
feel a slight impulse of gratitude while their crosses 
are new and their epaulettes untarnished. But not 
to advance is to decline, is the soldier's motto every- 
where ; and if advancement lags, they listen to the 
voice of the opposition charmer, charm he never so 
grossly. The government cannot complain. The 
line of precedents is unbroken. There is scarcely a 
general in Spain but owes his successive grades to 
successive treasons. 

The government finds it impossible to keep its 
promises of the reduction of the army and the 
abolition of the conscription. The policy of re- 
pression it has so unfortunately adopted renders 
necessary the maintenance of considerable garrisons 
in the principal towns, as long as the question of 
the monarchy is undecided. The re-enforcement of 
thirty-five thousand men sent to sustain the bar- 
barous and useless conflict in Cuba has so weakened 
the regular regiments of the Peninsula, that the 
sparse recruits obtained by volunteering are utterly 
inadequate to the demand. So that there hangs 
now over every peasant family in Spain that 



396 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

shadow of blind terror, — the conscription ; and 
every father is learning to curse the government 
that promised him peace and liberty, and threatens 
to steal his boy. 

"When the government has obtained its army of 
two hundred thousand men, — for, counting the 
Gendarmerie, the Carabineers, and the Cuban army, 
it will amount to that, — it can be used for nothing 
but diplomatic wars or internal oppression, and the 
people of Spain have had quite enough of both. 

With the provision of union between Church 
and State which has been incorporated in the new 
Constitution, the government has loaded itself with 
needless embarrassments. Instead of following the 
plain indication of popular sentiment, which de- 
manded a free church in a free state, the coalition, 
anxious to conciliate the reaction, established the 
Catholic Church as the religion of the state, assum- 
ing the expenses and the government of that com- 
plex and cumbrous system. In vain were all the 
arguments of the best jurists and most sensible men 
in the Cortes ; in vain the living thunders of an 
oratory such as the world has not known elsewhere 
in modern times. .With the exception of the wild 
harangue of Suner y Capdevila, who blindly took 
God to task for the errors of his pretended ministers, 
the liberal speakers who opposed the unhallowed 
union of Church and State treated the question with 
the greatest decency and discretion. Not only did 



NECESSITY OF THE KEPUBLIC. 397 

they refrain from attacking religion, they respected 
also the Church. After the Jesuit Manterola had 
concluded an elaborate argument, which might have 
been made by Torquemada, so bitter and wicked and 
relentless was it in its bigotry, Castelar rose, and in 
that marvellous improvisation which held the Cortes 
enchained for three hours, and renewed the bright 
ideals of antique oratory which our times had come 
to treat as fables, he did not utter a word which 
could have wounded the susceptibilities of any 
liberal-minded Catholic. When he concluded, all 
sections of the Chamber broke out in loud and long 
applause. Members of the government crossed over 
from the blue bench and embraced the young orator 
with tears. For an instant the Chamber seemed 
unanimous, under the spell of genius and enthusi- 
asm. But in another moment the President's bell 
sounded, and the members of the majority went 
back to their places, wiped their streaming eyes, 
and when the vote was taken, tied Church and State 
together. 

The embarrassments and troubles resulting from 
this anomalous marriage of an absolute church with 
a democratic government have become evident 
sooner even than any one anticipated. A large 
number of bishops, and among these the most 
prominent, are in open contumacy. They treat the 
orders of the Minister of Grace and Justice with 
loud and obstreperous contempt. They fomented 



398 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

and assisted as far as possible the Carlist risings of 
last summer. A considerable number have left the 
kingdom, in defiance of the order of the Ministry. 
The engagement which the government assumed to 
pay them their salaries is the cause of much of 
this insolence. The treasury is empty, and the 
clergy think they should at least have the privilege 
of despising the government while waiting for their 
pay. 

It is easy to see what the state has lost, it is hard 
to see what it has gained, by this ill-considered 
league with the church. 

The centralized administration of the government, 
which took its rise in the early days of the Bourbon 
domination, and has been growing steadily worse 
ever since, is fatal to the development of a healthy 
political life. A vast horde of office-holders is 
scattered over the kingdom, whose only object is to 
please their patrons at Madrid. The capital is 
necessarily filled with a time-serving population. 
Madrid, like Washington, is a capital and nothing 
else. It is not to be expected that any vigorous 
vitality of principle should exist in such a town. 
But the serious evil is, that all Spain is made tributary 
to the petty policy of personal interests which rules, 
for the time being, at the capital. The government 
being omnipresent in the provinces, public works 
of the plainest utility are made subordinate to the 
demands of party. When a leading man in a dis- 



NECESSITY OF THE REPUBLIC. 399 

tant region grows clamorous as to the wants of his 
province, he is quietly brought to Madrid and pro- 
vided for. The elections, so far, have been mere 
mockeries of universal suffrage. The numbers of 
Republican deputies and town councils is truly 
wonderful, in view of the constant government 
interference. 

The ill effect of this corrupt and centralized 
administration is seen in nothing more clearly than 
in the bad state of the finances. Enormous taxes 
are yearly imposed ; with great inequality and in- 
justice of distribution, it is true, but sufficient in 
quantity to answer all the demands of the state. 
But, instead of collecting them, the revenue officers 
seem to consider them legitimate capital for invest- 
ment and speculation. The people, knowing this, 
are worse than indifferent, they are absolutely hos- 
tile, to the collection of the imposts. There is a 
continual selfish strife between them and the tax- 
gatherers, — the one to avoid paying, the other to 
fill their own pockets. Hence results the constant 
deficit, the chronic marasmus, of the treasury. The 
nation is in a financial phthisis. It is not nourished 
by its revenues. 

These evils, and the bad traditions of centuries of 
miso'overnment have brought the masses of the 
Spanish people to a condition of complete political 
indifferentism. This is a condition most favorable 
to the easy operation of those schemes of cabinet 



400 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

intrigue and garrison conspiracy which have been 
for so many years the favorite machinery of Spanish 
politicians. But it is a state of things incompatible 
with that robust public activity to which the spirit 
of the age now invites all civilized peoples. In the 
opinion of all those who believe, as we do, in the 
political progress of the world, it is a situation which 
should not and can not endure. It is, therefore, the 
pressing duty of the hour for the statesmen of Spain 
to decide upon the best means of reforming it. 

Most Americans will agree with those thoughtful 
liberals of the Peninsula, who hold that this ref- 
ormation is impossible through the monarchy. 

A king, brought in by the existing coalition, 
would be worse than powerless to abolish these old 
abuses. He would need them all to consolidate his 
rule on the old iniquitous foundations of force and 
selfishness. He would not dare dismiss the army 
nor alienate its officers. He would flatter and buy 
as of old. He would fall into the hands of the 
greedy and imperious priesthood, in spite of all 
possible good intentions. He could not deprive 
himself of the support these logical partisans of 
divine right could give him in every city and ham- 
let of the kingdom. There would be under his 
reign no chance for decentralization. How could 
he be expected to strip himself, in the newness and 
uncertainty of his tenure of power, of this enor- 
mous influence and patronage ? 



NECESSITY OF THE REPUBLIC. 401 

There is not enough virtue or integrity of pur- 
pose in any of the old parties of Spain to take 
charge of the monarch and lead him on in the path 
of patriotic reform. They would be chiefly busied, 
as they are now, in fighting for the spoils and watch- 
ing each other. The Moderados are worn out and 
superannuated. The Liberal Union is a tattered 
harlequin's coat, — nothing left of the original stuff. 
The Progresistas have done good and glorious work 
in the past ; their leader, Prim, has often deserved 
well of the commonwealth ; but the party has fallen 
into complete decadence, under the baleful person- 
ality of its captain. He has absorbed, not only his 
own party, but also the so-called Democratic, fusing 
the two into one, which, in these last weeks, has 
begun to be called the Eadical party. The Duke 
of Seville, wittiest of the Bourbons since Henry 
IV., said the other day : " The point where all these 
parties agree is, ' the people is an ass ; let us jump 
on and ride ' : the point where they differ is the 
color of the saddle." 

So powerful has this mutual jealousy already be- 
come, that the members of the Liberal Union have 
withdrawn from the Cabinet, at the first mention 
of the name of the Duke of Genoa ; unwilling to 
remain in the government to assist in the enthrone- 
ment of a king not brought forward by themselves. 
It needs little sagacity to foresee the swarm of 
secret intrigues and cabals that would spring into 



402 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

life from the moment when the new and strange 
monarch took up his abode in that marble fortress 
of Philip V. The old story would be at once re- 
newed, with daily variations, of barrack-plots, scan- 
dals of the back stairs, and treasons of the Cama- 
rilla. The questions of national policy would at 
once sink into the background, and ministers of 
state would again be seen waiting in the antecham- 
bers of grooms and confessors. ; 

That these abuses and this apathetic condition of* 
the public conscience could not coexist with the re- 
public is undeniable. The very name is a declara- 
tion of war against the permanent army, the state 
church, the centralized system of administration. 
It is for this very reason that so many doubt if it 
be possible to found the republic in Spain. The 
system in possession is so formidable that to 
most observers it has seemed impregnable. The 
only question asked in Spain and in the world is, 
not whether the republic is needed there, but 
whether it is possible. All liberal people agree that, 
if it could be attained, it would be a great and 
beneficent thing. 

Some eighty deputies and several hundred thou- 
sand voting men in Spain want the republic to- 
day. They are willing to work and suffer for it, 
and many have shown that they counted it a light 
matter to die for it. A large number of journals 
preach the republic every day to a vast and con- 



NECESSITY OF THE REPUBLIC. 403 

stantly widening circle of readers. The Republi- 
cans, recently freed from the crushing pressure of 
the temporary dictatorship, have gone so actively to 
work that they seem the only men in Spain who 
are interested in the situation. The Republican 
minority in the Cortes is so far superior to any 
equal number of the majority, in earnestness and 
energy, that when they retired for a few weeks from 
the Chamber, on the suspension of individual guar- 
anties, the Chamber seemed struck suddenly by the 
hand of death. The benches of the government 
deputies were deserted, the galleries were empty. 
It was impossible to find a quorum present on any 
day for the voting of necessary laws. But on the 
day the Eepublicans returned every member was in 
his seat, and the listless Madrilenos waited for 
hours in the street to get standing-room in the gal- 
leries. Their bitterest enemies seemed glad to see 
them back. There was an irresistible attraction in 
their warm and frank enthusiasm. 

To this eager and earnest propaganda the Mon- 
archists seem ready to oppose nothing but the old- 
school politics of enigma and cabal. They content 
themselves with saying the republic is impossible. 
They never combat its principles. After a masterly 
exposition of the advantages of the republic and the 
defects of the monarchy to supply the pressing needs 
of Spain, a minister of the government rises and 
says the people of Spain do not want a republic, it 



404 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

will be years before a republic can be established in 
Spain. If driven into an argument, they usually 
say no more than that, if the republic came, it 
would not stay, and then they point to Greece and 
Rome and other transitory republics. It is this 
feebleness of response which is more convincing 
than the vigor of the attack. They say a majority 
of Spaniards are not Eepublicans. This is probably 
true. A majority of Spaniards are indifferent, and 
vote with the government for the time being. But 
the republic is making a most energetic and serious 
propaganda. It appears, after wild and useless 
revolt and bloodshed, to have settled down to a 
quiet and legal contest in the field of polemic dis- 
cussion. It is making converts every day, and, by 
the dynamic power that lies in a live principle, every 
man is worth as much again as a tepid advocate of 
the monarchy. 

Oue reason of the enormous advantage which the 
Republican orators possess in debate is, that the 
partisans of the monarchy are placed in a false posi- 
tion. They dare not say in public what they say 
in private, — that Spaniards are too ignorant and 
too violent for a republic. They shrink instinc- 
tively from thus libelling their country and indi- 
rectly glorifying the institution they oppose. This 
is a disadvantage which weighs heavily upon the re- 
actionists all over the world. In the old days, when 
the dumb people was taxed and worked at pleas- 



NECESSITY OF THE REPUBLIC. 405 

nre, the supporters of tyranny could afford to argue. 
Even the wise Quesnay and the virtuous Turgot, 
sustaining the social hierarchy of the days he- 
fore 1789, could call the laboring classes non-pro- 
ducers, and say that a bare subsistence was all a 
workingman had any right to expect. But it is an 
unconscious admission of the general growth of in- 
telligence in the proletariat, that no man dares say 
such things to-day. Gracefully or awkwardly, the 
working classes are always flattered by politicians. 
And if a statesman says civil things to the people, 
logic will carry him into the republic. 

It is hard to deny that, if. the chronic evils which 
have so long afflicted the life of Spain were once 
thoroughly eradicated, there are special aptitudes in 
the Peninsula for a federal republic. The federa- 
tion is ready made. There is a collection of states, 
with sufficiently distinct traditions and circum- 
stances to justify a full internal autonomy, and 
enough common interests to unite them under a 
federal administration. The Spaniards are not un- 
fitted by character for the republican system. They 
have a certain natural personal dignity which as- 
similates them to the strongly individualized North- 
ern races, and they possess in a remarkable degree 
the Latin instinct of association. They are the re- 
sult of three great immigrations, — the Celtic, the 
Eoman, and the Gothic. The republic would utilize 
the best traits of all these races. 



406 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

They ought to be an easy people to govern. They 
are sober, frugal, industrious, and placable. They 
can make their dinner of a crust of bread and a 
bunch of grapes. Their favorite luxuries are fresh 
air and sunshine ; their commonest dissipation is a 
glass of sweetened water and a guitar. It is not 
reasonable to say that, if the power was given them, 
they would use it worse than the epauletted bandits 
w r ho have held it for a century past. 

Comparisons drawn from the republics that have 
flourished and fallen are not altogether just. The 
condition of the world has greatly changed. We 
are nearing the close of the nineteenth century. 
The whole world, bound together in the solidarity 
of aspiration and interests by a vast publicity, by 
telegraphs and railways, is moving forward along all 
the line of nations to larger and ampler liberty. 
No junta of prominent gentlemen can come to- 
gether and amiably arrange a programme for a 
nation, in opposition to this universal tendency. 
It is too much for any one to prophesy what will be 
the final result of this great movement. But it 
cannot well be checked. The people have the right 
to govern themselves, even if they do it ill. If the 
republics of the present and future are to be tran- 
sient, it is sure that monarchies can make no claim 
to permanence ; and the republics of the past have 
always been marked by prodigious developments of 
genius and activity. 



NECESSITY OP THE REPUBLIC. 407 

It would be idle to ignore the great and serious 
difficulties in the way of the establishment of the 
republic in Spain. First and gravest is the opposi- 
tion of all the men who have so long made mer- 
chandise of the government, the hysterical denun- 
ciations of the alarmed church, the sullen hostility 
of the leading army officers, the selfish fears of the 
legion of office-holders. Then there is the appre- 
hension of feuds and dissensions in the Eepublican 
ranks. The people who have come so newly into 
possession of a political existence are not as steady 
and wise as those who have been voting a century 
or so. Always impatient and often suspicious, they 
are too apt to turn to-day on the idols of yesterday 
and rend them. They are most fortunate in the pos- 
session of such leaders as the inspired Castelar, the 
able and blameless Figueras, Pi y Margall, Orense, 
and others. But there is already a secret and 
smouldering hostility against these irreproachable 
statesmen, because they did not take their mus- 
kets and go out in the mad and fatal insurrection 
of October. There is an absurd and fantastic point 
of honor prevalent in Spain, which seems to in- 
fluence the government and the opposition in an 
almost equal degree. It compels an aggrieved party 
to respond to a real or imagined injury by some 
means outside of the law. Thus, when the Secre- 
tary of Tarragona was trampled to death by a mob, 
the government, instead of punishing the perpetra- 



408 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

tors, disarmed the militia of that and several ad- 
jacent towns. The militia of Barcelona illegally 
protested. They were, for this offence, illegally dis- 
armed. They flew to the barricades, refused to 
parley, and the insurrection burst out over half of 
Spain. There was not a step taken by either side 
that was not glaringly in conflict with the law of 
the land. Yet all this seems perfectly natural to 
the average Spaniard ; and we suppose if the gov- 
ernment had availed itself, in the circumstances, of 
the ample provisions of the law, it would have 
fallen into contempt among its partisans, much as a 
gentleman in Arkansas would suffer among his 
high-toned friends, if he should prosecute a tres- 
passer instead of shooting him. This destructive 
fantasy the best Eepublicans are laboring to eradi- 
cate from their party, while they inculcate the most 
religious obedience to the law. The Eepublican 
deputies say, in their manifesto of the 24th of 
November, a paper full of the purest and most 
faultless democracy, — 

" Let us continue in the committees, at the polls, 
in the clubs, and everywhere, the education of the 
people. Let us show them that they have no right 
to be oppressors, because they have been oppressed ; 
that they have no right to be tyrants, because they 
have been slaves ; that their advent is the ruin of 
kings and executioners ; that the terror preached in 
the name of the people can only serve the people's 



NECESSITY OF THE REPUBLIC. 409 

enemies ; that a drop of blood blots the immortal 
splendor of our ideas ; and that the triumph of the 
people is the triumph of justice, of equal right for 
all." 

If, as we admit, the establishment of the repub- 
lic will be attended with very serious embarrass- 
ments, it seems, on the other hand, that the foun- 
dation of any permanent dynasty in the present 
situation is little short of impossible. The year and 
a half that has elapsed since the cry of " Hspana 
con Honra " resounded in the harbor of Cadiz has 
been wellnigh fatal to monarchy in Spain. The 
people have been long accustomed to revolutions ; 
it is dangerous to let them learn they can do with- 
out kings. If the Duke of Montpensier had been 
at Alcolea, the army would have acclaimed him 
king within an hour after the fall of Novaliches* 
Even later, with moderate haste, he could have 
joined the army and made his terms with Prim, 
Serrano, and Topete, parting the vestments of the 
state among them, and entering Madrid in the blaze 
of enthusiasm that surrounded the liberating trium- 
virs. But soon the conflict of interests began. The 
Eepublican party was born struggling, and received 
its double baptism of blood. The sorely perplexed 
Provisional Government took refuge in procrastina- 
tion, and the interregnum came in officially. For a 
year the proudest nation on earth has been begging 
a king in half the royal antechambers and nurseries 

18 



410 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

of Europe. A Spanish satirist has drawn a carica- 
ture of a circle of princely youths standing before 
a vacant throne over which hangs the sword of 
Damocles. His Excellency Mr. Olozaga begs them 
to be seated. But the shy strangers excuse them- 
selves. " It is very pretty, but we don't like the 
upholstery." The citizen Benito Juarez has taught 
even the unteachable. 

If it were simply the coyness of princes that 
was to be overcome, the matter would not be so 
grave. There is no doubt that General Prim's 
government can at any time command a formal 
majority in the present Cortes for any one whom he 
may designate; and princes can always be found 
who would not require much violence to seat them 
on the throne of St. Ferdinand. There is always 
Montpensier, infinitely better than any one else yet 
named. But the truth is, that a profound impres- 
sion is becoming manifest in Spain that a king is 
not needed ; that, in fact, there is something gro- 
tesque in the idea of a great nation deliberately 
making itself a king, as a girl makes herself a baby 
of a rag and a ribbon. A dynasty is a thing of 
mystery and tradition, glorious and venerable, not 
for itself, but for its associations and its final con- 
nection with a shadowy and worshipful past. It 
requires a robust faith to accept it in our levelling 
days with all these adjuncts ; but it is too absurd 
to think of two or three middle-aged gentlemen 



NECESSITY OF THE EEPUBLIC. 411 

tors, disarmed the militia of that and several ad- 
jacent towns. The militia of Barcelona illegally- 
protested. They were, for this offence, illegally dis- 
armed. They flew to the barricades, refused to 
parley, and the insurrection burst out over half of 
Spain. There was not a step taken by either side 
that was not glaringly in conflict with the law of 
the land. Yet all this seems perfectly natural to 
the average Spaniard ; and we suppose if the gov- 
ernment had availed itself, in the circumstances, of 
the ample provisions of the law, it would have 
fallen into contempt among its partisans, much as a 
gentleman in Arkansas would suffer among his 
high-toned friends, if he should prosecute a tres- 
passer instead of shooting him. This destructive 
fantasy the best Eepublicans are laboring to eradi- 
cate from their party, while they inculcate the most 
religious obedience to the law. The Eepublican 
deputies say, in their manifesto of the 24th of 
November, a paper full of the purest and most 
faultless democracy, — 

" Let us continue in the committees, at the polls, 
in the clubs, and everywhere, the education of the 
people. Let us show them that they have no right 
to be oppressors, because they have been oppressed ; 
that they have no right to be tyrants, because they 
have been slaves ; that their advent is the ruin of 
kings and executioners ; that the terror preached in 
the name of the people can only serve the people's 



412 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

Bad as was the genius of the old houses of Castile 
and Arragon, a worse entered the monarchy with 
Charles V. and his family. He brought into the 
Spains the shadow of the Germanic tyranny, where 
the temporal and. spiritual powers were more firmly 
welded together into an absolute despotism over 
body and soul. The mind of Spain was paralyzed 
by the steady contemplation of two awful and un- 
questionable divinities, — the god of this world, the 
king for the time being, and the God of the priests, 
as like the earthly one as possible. 

Then came the princes of that family whose 
mission seems to be to carry to their uttermost 
result the inherent faults of kingship, and so destroy 
the prestige of thrones. Philip V., first of the 
Spanish Bourbons, came down from the Court of 
Louis XIV. with all the pride and luxury and 
meanness of le Boi Soleil, fully permeated with 
that absurd maxim of royal fatuity, " En France,, la 
nation ne fait pas corps. Z'JStat, — c'est le Roil" 
This was the family that finished monarchy in Spain, 
by making everything subsidiary to the vulgar 
splendor of the court. It made way with the wealth 
of the Indies in vast palaces and pleasure-grounds. 
It corrupted and ruined half the aristocracy in the 
senseless follies and orgies of the capital. Yet it 
was not a cheerful or jolly court. The kings were 
rickety, hypochondriac, epileptic, subject to frightful 
attacks of gloom and bilious piety. The Church 



NECESSITY OF THE REPUBLIC. 413 

naturally profited by this to extend its material and 
spiritual domains. It revelled in mortmains and 
inquisitions. 

We must do the Bourbons the justice to say that, 
when they go seriously to work to destroy a throne, 
they do it very thoroughly and with reasonable 
promptness. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Louis 
managed in their two reigns to overturn the mon- 
archy of Clovis. The Spanish Bourbons in a cen- 
tury, besides the small thrones they have ruined in 
Italy, have utterly destroyed the prestige of the 
crown in Spain. That the phantom of divine right 
has utterly vanished from this country, where it 
was once a living reality, seems too evident for dis- 
cussion. This appears in the daily utterances of the 
press, in the common speech of men, in the open 
debates of the Cortes. In the land where once the 
king's name was not mentioned but with uncovered 
head and a reverent Que Dios guarde ! where liberty 
and property only existed by his gracious sufferance, 
the Minister of Finance talks of prosecuting the 
queen for overdrawing her bank account and stealing 
the jewels of the Crown. The loyal faith and wor- 
ship, which from the Visigoths to the Bourbons was 
twelve centuries in growing, has disappeared in a 
lifetime, driven away by the analytical spirit of the 
age, aided by the journalism of the period and the 
eccentricities of Dona Isabel. 

The absolute monarchy is clearly impossible ; the 



414 CASTILIAN DAYS. 

constitutional monarchy is a compromise with tradi- 
tion unworthy of the time, and useless in the 
attitude of free choice where Spain now stands. 
No decision will bring immediate peace and pros- 
perity to a country so long and systematically mis- 
ruled. But the only logical solution, and the one 
which offers most possibilities of safety and perma- 
nence, is the Eepublic. 



THE END 



Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 

3^77-6 



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